Development of a Wireless Landslide Monitoring System

This paper reports on development of a wireless landslide monitoring system. The monitoring devices employed consist of rain gauge, piezometers/tensiometers for measuring both positive and negative pore water pressure, as well as inclinometers. Such system can be used to evaluate current safety factor of natural or manmade slopes prone to rainfall-induced failure, as well as to assess the performance of some slope stabilization methods. Commercially available MEMs sensors have been used to fabricate these instruments at Kasetsart University, which means their costs are highly affordable. In order to overcome the difficulties in accessing the instrumented site, innovative wireless data logger has also been developed, based on GPRS and sensor network technology. The first prototype landslide monitoring system of this kind has been installed at Thadan dam, Nakhonnayok province, Thailand. Limit equilibrium and finite element analyses have been used to estimate the early warning criterion for this site based on the values of rainfall, pore water pressure as well as shear strains. Such warnings can thus be issued to communities at risk of landslide or to highway maintenance personnel quickly through the wireless data transfer system