Automatic Detection of Alpin Mass Movements
Abstract
Alpine natural hazards are an ever-increasing threat to people and property due to the fast socio-economic development of mountain areas. Different efforts are made by government agencies to protect settlements and traffic routes, whereby the detection and measurement of mass movements have become an important task. This project aims to build up a reliable warning system for detecting debris flows and avalanches by analysing the seismic and infrasound waves emitted by these mass movements. There exist several approaches to detect avalanches or debris flow with infrasonic or seismic sensors, but to date the combination of seismic and infrasound sensors has not been considered. Previous studies have already shown that seismic and infrasonic signals of alpine mass movements are correlated and complementary. The combination of these two sensor types will serve as the basis of the proposed error resistant warning system in this project. A further innovative aspect is that the new system will be able for detecting both debris flows and avalanches. Most of the current measurement systems use infrasonic or seismic arrays to locate mass movements. These systems require expensive setups of multiple sensors and data transferring equipment, as well as intensive data processing techniques. The goal of this project is to develop a system that is based on a minimum of one seismic and one infrasound sensor which are co-located, to detect mass movements with high accuracy directly on-site. The basic idea is to develop a detection algorithm by using the evolution in time of the frequency content of the mass movement signal. This detection algorithm will be one of the main tasks of the project. For the algorithm development, the current existing database of seismic and infrasound signals at IAN (Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering) will be used for verification and analysis of the detection performance. The second part of the project will be the extension of the current measurement system and the development of a warning system. The actual system used by IAN does not have the ability to execute the detection algorithm at the sensor site; therefore, the system will be extended by a microcontroller, which will do the necessary calculation. This new system will be tested and evaluated at the Austrian test site Lattenbach and the ski region Kitzsteinhorn. The company partner GeoExpert offers the necessary contact to potential customers to defined the requirements for the detection algorithm as well as the hardware and software requirement. This will providing optimal expertise for a good success of the project.
keywords Infrasound warning systems seismic signals
Publikationen
Project staff
Johannes Hübl
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Johannes Hübl
johannes.huebl@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-87111
Project Leader
01.09.2012 - 31.03.2015
BOKU partners
External partners
Geoexpert Research and Planning GmbH
DI Gerhard Volk
partner