A Robust Wireless Sensor Network for Landslide Risk Analysis: System Design, Deployment, and Field Testing

In this paper, we propose a wireless sensor network (WSN) designed for monitoring and risk management of landslides, where data collected by sensors are delivered through the network to a remote unit for online analysis and alerting. To ensure fast deployment, robustness in harsh environments, and very long lifetime, the sensor nodes and the communication protocol have been specifically conceived, so that the network is self-organizing, fault tolerant, and adaptive. The WSN has been installed on a landslide located in Torgiovannetto (Italy) for an experimental campaign of several months where performance metrics, such as radio link and path statistics as well as battery levels, have been collected. These metrics demonstrated the effectiveness of the network protocols to manage self-organization, node failures, low link quality, and unexpected battery depletion. With negligible human intervention during the pilot experiment, the WSN revealed a very high level of robustness, which makes it suitable to monitor landslides in critical scenarios.