Slide Sentinel: A Fully Automated, Low-Cost Landslide Monitoring System Using Real Time Kinematics
Abstract
Landslides cost the United States an estimated 3.5 billion in infrastructural damage per year and claim the lives of 25-50 people annually . Regularly monitoring the activity of landslides with high spatio-temporal resolution and accuracy can provide valuable early warning information and aid in the interpretation of landslide kinematics. Traditional landslide monitoring techniques often require drilling, which is expensive, time-consuming, potentially dangerous, and limited in serviceability over time. Owing to these constraints, the Slide Sentinel aims to create a low-cost, easily deployable, landslide monitoring system capable of producing centimeter-level positional readings using RTK GNSS. The system consists of a centralized base station and a network of rover units which may be deployed over the extents of active landslide terrain. Rover units on the network wake at configurable intervals, receive RTK correctional data from the local base station, and produce a positional reading. Readings are sent to the base station and are uploaded via an Iridium satellite link to a Google spreadsheet for real-time updates of rover movement. Rover units come equipped with a 6 millig-precision accelerometer capable of waking the device in the event of sudden movement and can be remotely configured from a client portal to increase wake frequency and verbosity. We present data from various test sites showing the influence of site characteristics on rover accuracy. These tests show that heavy vegetation is a key issue for stable RTK among low-cost GNSS receivers. In such environments, little performance improvement is seen between dual and single frequency receivers, warranting further research into triple-frequency, multi-constellation OEM solutions. A single base station and rover unit designed to operate in an environment with clear sky view for three months costs ~1800 USD, and can provide positional readings every three hours. Follow the project at http://www.open-sensing.org/slide-sentinel .
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H11H1573E
- Keywords:
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- 1810 Debris flow and landslides;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1835 Hydrogeophysics;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4315 Monitoring;
- forecasting;
- prediction;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4341 Early warning systems;
- NATURAL HAZARDS