MONITORING OF LANDSLIDES AND INFRASTRUCTURES WITH WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN AN EARTHQUAKE ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Besides precipitation triggered landslides, a major thread from landslides is related to earthquake triggered landslides, which account for the majority of catastrophic landslides. This fact is complicated due to the progressive development of urban areas and infrastructure, the dependency of our society on a functioning infrastructure and an increasing number of endangered objects in the affected areas. Therefore there is a need to improve basic understanding of the technical, financial and social risks posed by earthquakes triggered landslides. Furthermore basic understanding of processes and cascading hazards related to earthquake triggered landslides must be improved. For the past two decades an increasing number of landslide warning systems are developed and applied for general public and industrial purposes. On the other side earthquake triggered landslide warning and monitoring has made very little advances and is still under development. Resent research in the area of sensor network development focus on the application of micro sensors (MEMS) in ad hoc wireless sensor networks operated in an interoperable spatial data infrastructure (SDI) according to the sensor web enablement (SWE) guidelines of the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) for real-time monitoring of landslides like the SLEWS – Sensor based Landslide Early Warning System. The SLEWS sensor nodes provide next to motion detection also a 3D acceleration data to evaluate direction and value of the peak acceleration. This information can be used in an event case both to monitor endangered slopes or critical infrastructures and to initiate warnings to trigger e.g. rail or road blocks. Furthermore the data from the sensor network can be provided in real-time for shake or alert maps via standardized interfaces.