Design and deployment of a wireless sensor network for landslide risk management

Abstract

In this paper we propose a wireless sensor network (WSN) designed for landslides monitoring and risk management. The WSN is self-organizing, has fault tolerance capabilities, and its behavior is driven by the events to be monitored, to guarantee fast deployment, robustness in harsh environments, and very long lifetime. Data collected by sensors are delivered through the network to a remote unit (RU) for on-line analysis and alerting. The WSN has been installed on a landslide located in Torgiovannetto (Italy) for an experimental campaign of several months where performance metrics, such as path statistics and battery levels, have been collected. These metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of the network protocols to manage self-organization, node failures, low link quality and unexpected battery depletion. With negligible human intervention during the pilot experiment the WSN revealed a very high level of robustness, which makes it suitable to monitor landslides in critical scenarios.