Continuous Monitoring of Landslides and Infrastructure for Asset Management

The University of Wollongong Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences Landslide Research Team (UoW), with our industry partners, Wollongong City Council, Roads and Maritime and Sydney Trains, has developed a network of thirty one currently active Continuous near Real-Time Monitoring (CRTM) stations within NSW.

This paper provides a general overview of the field monitoring equipment used, the monitoring strategies employed, wireless and mobile communications employed and a brief mention of the monitoring server setup and the related IT setup. The second part of the paper focuses a more detailed summary of two site installations, the acquired monitoring history and how this has expanded our knowledge and understanding of the site geological models and allowed progress towards site remediation and ongoing management. A brief mention of several interesting and emerging technologies in the fields of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Low Power, Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) instrumentation is made.

The paper concludes by highlighting some critical issues related to the development of site monitoring strategies that experience has shown are sometimes not well managed. These include the reason for monitoring, the awareness of ongoing maintenance costs for the life of the monitoring, the duration of monitoring and reasons to either continue, modify and cease a monitoring program.