Detection of Rainfall Induced Landslide via

Wireless Sensor

by

FRANCIS ALLEN CUBANGBANG VIDAL

JAMUEL CRUZ VENTURINA
DANIELLE MARK ORTIZ QUIJANO

BS in Computer Engineering

Mapa Institute of Technology

August 2015

APPROVAL SHEET

This is to certify that we have supervised the preparation of and read the theses paper
prepared by Francis Allen C. Vidal, Jamuel C. Venturina and Danielle Mark O. Quijano
entitled Detection of Rainfall Induced Landslide via Wireless Sensor and that the said paper
has been submitted for final examination by Oral Examination Committee.

Adviser

Adviser

As member of the Oral Examination Committee, we certify that we have examined this paper
and hereby recommend that it be accepted as fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the
Degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering

Panel Member 1

Panel Member 2

Committee Chair
This thesis paper is hereby approved and accepted by the School of EECE as fulfillment of
the thesis requirement for the Degree Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering.

Alejandro H. Alejandro, Jr
Dean, School of EECE

III
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to give our thanks to each other Francis, Jamuel and Danielle for
contributing efforts for this research about wireless sensor to detect landslide causes by heavy
rain. We also like to thank our adviser Engr. Jocelyn Villaverde for guiding us and giving us

unlimited amount of consideration. Also we would like to give our thanks to Maneesha V.
Ramesh from the Department of Computer Science, Amrita School of Engineering for his
work on his research about wireless sensor network that give us an idea and made a huge
impact for our research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

iv

ABSTRACT

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Chapter 3: DETECTION OF RAINFALL INDUCED

3
8

LANDSLIDE via WIRELESS SENSOR

Methodology

Result and Discussion

11

Conclusion

14

References

15

V
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses about the effort of developing a wireless sensor network which
for us could be helpful for detecting and monitoring the condition of the soil. Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN) is spatially distributed autonomous sensors to monitor physical or

environmental condition, such as temperature, sound, pressure and etc. and to cooperatively
pass their data through a network. This also includes the design, development and
implementation of the WSN for Real Time monitoring. Monitoring regularly and going to a
landslide prone area is a hassle and it has a high probability of an accident that would cause
injuries and lives. The objective would be simple to achieve our aim to monitor rainfall
induced landslide particularly the soil outside from the dangerous area.

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Landslides have always existed on our planet. It was generally classified as
movement of rock, debris and soil down a slope of land. One of the causes of landslides was
a heavy rainfall which when sloped areas become completely saturated by heavy rainfall

many times landslides can occur. Problem is that landslide can occur anytime during heavy
rainfall no one can predict if it will occur without regularly checking it but it would be
dangerous for a monitoring team to go to the area, if somehow visited by the team when
heavy rainfall occur might result to a casualty or injuries.
According to the work of Evan Garich from the WIRELESS, AUTOMATED
MONITORING FOR POTENTIAL LANDSLIDE HAZARDS that laboratory development
and field evaluations have demonstrated that the wireless sensor node show potential for
geotechnical applications requiring surface monitoring of soil condition in remote location,
such as shallow landslide and debris slide.
Deploying highly powered sensors are needed, continuing the study and developing
of such sensors that would fit to slope areas are also needed to prevent failures, for the
sensors are prone to failure. The real problem is that landslide randomly occurs and it should
be monitored and because of occurrence of heavy rainfall in the Philippines monitoring the
ground contents water is also needed to be monitored.
We aim to use the wireless sensor network to monitor real time characteristics of a
soil to detect rainfall induced landslide and monitoring the soil and area without moving
operative personnel to the landslide prone area. Data will be monitored and read by operative
personnel in a nearby safe center.
The significance of it, the soil can be monitor from a safe area and if monitored
properly it might save civilian lives. It is important for us to monitor the soil status when
heavy rain and due to wireless sensors we can monitor it far away from the dangerous area it
will reduce the expense for transportation especially for the team assigned. If we are able to

monitor the behavior of the soil we can able to predict how safe and how stable the soil is so
if we are able to know that it was unstable we can give early warning to the nearby citizens to
prevent possible harm.
This paper only covers the development in terms its architecture, algorithm and
deployment of the wireless sensors. It will not cover the early detection of landslide
occurring but only detection by monitoring. The study will focus only more in detecting the
landslide via wireless sensor network and its uses. The proposed study will also cover the
importance and how does the sensor will be use. It will also discussed the architecture of the
system up to the field deployment where does the earthquake and landslide occur.

Chapter 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Instrumentation for Landslide Monitoring for Slope Movement Monitoring

From the thesis of Evan Garich Entitled, Automated Monitoring for Potential Landslide
Hazards that the

Monitoring Landslides includes monitoring of slope movement and

monitoring of water or groundwater of the soil. In Slope movement monitoring there are
some 5 basic elements or vital signs, these vital signs (1) determination of types of
landslides; (2) Monitoring of landslide triggers and causes; (3) determination of geologic
material involved in landslides; (4) measurement and assessment of landslide movement; (5)
regional assessment of landslide hazards and risk. Each of these vital signs has three relative
methods
2.2 Instrumentation for Landslide Monitoring for Groundwater Monitoring
From the international groundwater resources assessment center which entitled Guideline
on: Groundwater monitoring for general reference purposes that the Groundwater monitoring
is a scientifically designed, continuing measurement and maintaining an observation of the
groundwater situation. The design of a groundwater monitoring program involves a number
of steps, as shown in the Figure 2.1. These steps are intended to make sure that the program
provides optimal data to the user: institution and persons involved in groundwater
assessment, development, management and protection or other groundwater data dependent
activities.

Figure 2.1 Groundwater Monitoring Program

2.3 LANDSLIDE OCCURENECE IN THE PHILIPPINES
The occurrence of fatal landslide is heavily influenced by tectonic processes, rainfall and the
presence of a vulnerable population. In the Philippines exposure to landslide resulting from
heavy rainfall is proportionately greater than others where earthquake are of greater
significance like japan. Recurrent devastating landslide in the Philippines was attributed to
heavy rainfall and illegal logging because of that Philippines is also prone to landslide.

2.4 WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK ALGROTIHMS

From the work of Maneesha V. Ramesh entitled Real-time Wireless Sensor Network for
Landslide Detection that the WINSOC project has developed a newly and totally innovative
design methodology, where the accuracy and reliability of the wireless sensor is achieved
through a proper interaction Relevant data should be collected during rainy season because
we intend to focus mainly on rainfall induced landslides, therefore by developing a threshold
base algorithm that will influence the sampling rate of the geological sensors and the
transmission of data to higher layers using rainfall and pore pressure based alert.

Different

methods can be used to implement the algorithm first would be homogeneous sensor column
deployed in each other can be compared and a consensus value can be achieved for all sensor
columns in that region second all the sensors deployed can be assigned with weightage third
decentralized consensus performed for the same type of sensors in all sensor columns in a
region.

2.5 NETWORK PROTOCOLS

Designing network protocols for wireless sensor networks, several factors should be
considered. Frist because of the scarce energy resources, routing decisions should be guided
by some awareness of the energy resources in the network. Furthermore, sensor networks are
unique from general ad hoc networks in that communication channels often exist between
events and sinks, rather than between individual sources nodes and sinks.

2.6 SENSORS
Table A. Circuit Requirements

Learned from the work of Maneesha V. Ramesh that sensors that could monitor soil
pressure, moisture and groundwater are needed the requirement sensors are given from the
Table A shown. The Strain Gauge Piezometer are designed for monitoring soil pressure or
changes in water level, The Vibrating Wire Piezometer is used to monitor pore pressure to
determine slope stability, third the Dielectric moisture sensor are used to determine soil
moisture content by measuring electrical characteristic of soil, the Tiltmeter which is a
sensitive inclinometer designed to measure very small changes from vertical level, and last
the Geophone which converts ground movement or displacement into a voltage.
2.7 THE SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM FOR SENSOR COLUMN

Figure 2.2 Schematic Diagrams for the Sensor Column

Based from the work of Maneesha V. Ramesh commercially available wireless sensor
nodes do not have implanted sensor to measure pore pressure, moisture content, vibration,
earth movements and etc. This constraint has lead them and us to implement data acquisition
boards to connect the external sensor to the wireless sensor nodes. The geological sensors
were placed inside a sensor column and they were connected to the wireless sensor node via
a data acquisition board shown in Figure 2.2. In here all the geological sensors are not placed
inside the column but are connected to the same wireless sensor node.
Chapter 3
DETECTION OF RAINFALL INDUCED LANDSLIDE via WIRELESS SENSOR
Methodology
In order to meet the objectives of the study, the research will follow the procedure
shown in Figure 3.1

Figure 3.1 Methodology

Review of Related Literature
We have discusses the review of related literature on the chapter two which discusses the
instrumentation mostly for slope movement monitoring and the instrumentation for
groundwater monitoring.

Conceptual Framework
Figure 3.2 Conceptual Framework
Sensors

Data
Transmission

Readable Data

The conceptual framework of our study will start with the sensors which collect and convert
data into a voltage and transmit it to an involved data center and read the data to use for
monitoring the soil condition.
Wireless Sensor Network Architecture

Figure 3.3: Architecture for WSN for Landslide

Our deployment area is divided into three regions such as crown region, middle region, and
toe region as shown in Figure 3.3, and numerous low level nodes attached..

Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network

WSN uses four algorithms for the implementation of clustering, distributed consent among
the data, energy efficient data aggregation and time synchronization. That all of these will
greatly contribute for the development of an efficient landslide monitoring system.
Wireless Sensor Testbed

The design and development of a wireless sensor network for the landslide scenario involves
consideration of different factors such as terrain structure, vegetation index, climate
variation, accessibility of the area etc. The prerequisites of wireless sensor network
development are selection of sensor column location, sensor column design and its data
collection method, understanding transmission range and necessity of external antennas or
additional relay nodes, identification of the communication protocol, development of
application specific algorithms for data aggregation, routing and fault tolerance. The testbed
deployed within the Philippines, which follows two layers of hierarchy with lower layer and

an upper layer. Wherein the Fault Tolerance or Reliability (

Poisson Distribution Where

Rk ( t ) =exp (k t )

) from

and t are the failure rate of sensor node k and the time

period, respectively.
Field Deployment
Deployment will be on some places where there are usual cases of landslide like in the place
of Baguio. Deployment of sensor column and sensors will be dependent to the geographic
place of the site.

Results on Monitoring by Data Analysis System

The Data Management Center consists of database server and an analysis station which
performs data analysis on the data received from the field. The software also has the
capability to real streaming data. Data is successfully received from the deployment site.

Data received from two pore pressure transducers and rain gauge it shows like in the figure
3.4
Figure 3.4: Real-time field data

Table I Technical specification of sensors

Table II Calibration Equation for Sensors

Table III Sensors data stored in servers

Landslide monitoring and prediction system uses five different types of sensors. Rainfall,
vertical angle, horizontal angle, slope displacement, and pore pressure are measured by
raingauge, tiltmeter, in place inclometer, vibrating wire piezometer and a piezometer. The
operating principles of these sensors are shown in Table I. Output voltage of each sensor was
measured using a separate multimeter at certain intervals and corresponding sensors raw
data were noted for the particular sensor. Then the raw data were converted to actual sensor
values by using calibration sheet of the particular sensor as shown in Table II. Finally, a few
data were selected from all the measured data and a data table was prepared for actual sensor
value. A graph of actual sensor values and corresponding sensors raw data stored in
computer was prepared for the respective sensor. The values we obtain are shown in table III
the angle increases as the rain continuously pouring.

Conclusion

Wireless sensor networks are one of the most promising emerging technologies, providing
the opportunity for real-time monitoring of geographical regions (remote and hostile) that are
prone to disasters. With a focus on landslide detection, this work reaffirms the capability of
wireless sensor networks for disaster mitigation. The use of WSN is a great asset in a country
like the Philippines. Therefore we conclude that this can help the disaster management team
for monitoring landslide in real time results are shown in the figure 3.4 where readable data
is shown as a line graph pore pressure are observe in terms of voltage. It will be monitored
via computer monitor and because of these wireless sensors the objective of monitoring
rainfall induced landslide is achieve and also monitoring it in the safe data center will be
achieve. We are able to achieve monitoring of the rainfall induced landslide by the help of
sensors that will read the ground content and determining the rain pouring by the help of a
raingauge.

References:

(1)Thesis of Evan Garich Entitled, Automated Monitoring for Potential Landslide Hazards
(2) The international groundwater resources assessment center which entitled Guideline on :
Groundwater monitoring for general reference purposes
(3) The work of Maneesha V. Ramesh entitled Real-time Wireless Sensor Network for
Landslide Detection
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone
(5)http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.org/landingpage.cfm?
articleid=ca.v054n03p43&fulltext=yes