Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology at Mandi (IIT MAndi) have developed an indigenous and low-cost landslide monitoring and warning system that has been successfully deployed on a trial basis at ten places on Mandi- Jogindarnagar and Mandi – Kullu highways already. The system costing around Rs 20,000 monitors the soil movement and weather parameters to alert the possible landslides.
In fact, the system was operational at Kutropi, when a massive mudflow took place recently damaging the Mandi-Jogindar Nagar Highway. Kutropi had witnessed a massive landslide in 2017 monsoon season, according to a press release issued by the IIT-Mandi on Monday. Shortly, the system is to be deployed in Sirmaur and other districts of himachal Pradesh and also at several landslide-prone locations in India.
The technology was developed by the faculty-student group working at the Institute’s Catalyst incubator named iIoTs (Intelligent IoT Solutions). The institute had already filed patents on the low-cost technology and published the research outcomes in top academic outlets including IEEE-Wiley and the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Journal.
The system generates warnings both locally via blinkers and hooters and globally via SMSs if there are soil movements of different magnitudes in the vicinity of the deployed system. The systems were installed at Narla, Kutropi, Gumma, Deode, Hanogi, Thalot, Dwada, and Pandoh villages.
The landslide monitoring system detects if there is significant soil movement, then vehicular road traffic can be alerted by the system using blinkers, which have been provided along the road where possible.
The blinkers come online for 10-15 seconds with lights and sound each time soil movement is recorded at the deployment site. The iIoTs team is headed by Shubham Agrawal and the team-members are Praveen Kumar, Ankush Pathania, Priyanka Sihag, Pratik Chaturvedi, and Naresh Mali. The team is mentored by IIT Mandi faculty, Dr. Varun Dutt (Computer Science and Engineering) and Dr. K. V. Uday (Civil Engineering), the press release added.
