Soil Area Network for Landslide Prediction and Prevention System

based on ARM Cortex M3, WSN, MEMS and GSM

Abstract
Around the globe, landslides and mudslides are serious geological hazards affecting people, and
causing significant damages every year. Approximately 15% of total area of India is susceptible to
landslides. These areas are marked as Landslide Hazard Zones. Landslides occur mainly due to heavy
rainfall experienced by these zones during the monsoon season and sometimes as an aftermath of an
earthquake. The existing methods uses satellite image sensing technology or a camera based image
sensing. But these methods are not the cheapest one also.
The solution this project gives is based upon the concept of low cost wireless sensor networks
(WSN). WSN method uses a sensor network consisting of sensor columns. Sensor columns are deployed
on hills to find the early signals preceding a mudslide or landslide. This sensor network consists of a
collection of sensor columns placed inside the vertical holes drilled during the network deployment phase
and they are installed in a distributed manner over the monitored area. Each sensor column has two
components: the sensing component that is buried underground and contains all the instruments, and the
computing component that stays above ground and contains the processor and radio module.
The sensor node consists of a MEMS acceleration sensor and a soil moisture sensor, a low power
data processing unit (microcontroller) and wireless communication unit based on IEEE 802.15.4 RF
transceiver. Amount of soil moisture (wetness) increases the possibility of land and mudslides. MEMS
acceleration sensor is used to assess the slope stability. The slope stability is a measure of tilt/inclination
of the land. Any suggestive movement of land changes the orientation (tilt) measurement of the MEMS
sensor. Sensor nodes transport this information to host system through the wireless network. Detection is
performed by the host node after receiving data from all the sensor nodes. If it detects an approaching
landslide or an occurring one, the host system immediately transmits an emergency SMS to the governing
authority at long distance by means of GSM unit interfaced with it.
The project gives a cheaper method of landslide prediction and prevention based on WSN with
the help of low cost sensors. WSN can be extended to alert the people in their home through nodes with
sirens. By connecting it with warning traffic lights on the road the vehicles in the region can be alerted
before a landslide. The microcontroller chosen is based on ARM Cortex M3 architecture. ARM Cortex
M3 is the next generation high performance 32-bit ARM core developed specifically for microcontroller
applications with thumb-2 technology based on ARMv7-M architecture.