SENSUM: smart SENSing of landscapes Undergoing hazardous hydrogeologic Movement
£1.2 million, Oct 2020 – Sept 2022, funded by UKRI Constructing a Digital Environment
PI: Georgina Bennett, University of Exeter CoIs: Exeter: Richard Brazier, Chunbo Luo, Geyong Min; Plymouth: Irene Manzella, Alison Raby, Iain Stewart, Sarah Boulton; UEA: Aldina Franco
Summary:
Floods and landslides affect the UK every year, both inland and along the coast, causing disruption, occasional fatalities and severe economic loss. Flooding over the winter of 2015-2016 cost the UK economy ~£1.6 billion alone and landslides impact critical rail and road infrastructure every year. Landsliding in the South West during storms of 2014 contributed £3 billion worth of damage to the rail network in the region. In 2016 the UK government allocated £15 million for Natural Flood Management (NFM) schemes to reduce flood risk, alongside £300 million for conventional flood management schemes.
Similar large sums are also spent on protecting infrastructure and people from landslides and slope instability, with more than £30 million spent to stabilize the cliffs at Lyme Regis alone. Globally these are among the most lethal and damaging hazards and their impacts are set to increase with climate change, sea-level rise and population pressure. At the same time, the technology deployed up to now is not able to cope effectively with this rapid increase in hazard frequency and intensity. Landslides and floods are both triggered by heavy rainfall, often occurring simultaneously, and may interact to generate cascading hazards. There is a need to improve and integrate the way these hydrogeological hazards are assessed, as mitigating the risks associated with them is urgent to safeguard a sustainable future.
SENSUM proposes a novel integrated approach for the management of hydrogeological hazards, leveraging advances in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, microelectronics and machine learning to provide warnings of hazardous events and improve numerical models of their dynamics. It addresses specific landslide and flood risk management problems in the UK – threats highlighted by organisations tasked with managing these hazards. SENSUM will work closely with these organisations to revolutionise and dramatically improve monitoring, and to provide increased understanding and mitigation of landslide and flood hazards.
Overarching aim – SENSUM will establish an effective digital environment to reduce risk related to hydrogeological hazards, improving early warning systems, propagation models, perception and preparedness of risk with the use of innovative and state of the art digital technologies in different phases of risk management.
Objectives –
O1. Develop a smart tracking device to be embedded within boulder and wood debris in landslide and flood prone sites to detect and track hazardous movement.
O2. Use data on movement of ‘smart’ boulders and wood in field-based WSNs and laboratory experiments to enhance models of landslide initiation and propagation and wood transport in floods.
O3. Design an operational early warning system of hazardous hydrogeological movement based on WSNs of smart boulders and wood.
O4. Develop compelling visualizations of field and laboratory data and numerical models to facilitate communication and management of landslide and flood hazards.
SENSUM addresses several key objectives of the Constructing a Digital Environment funding programme. It brings together environmental scientists with computer scientists and science visualization and communication experts to address several elements in the end-to-end data chain, from collection of data (we will develop novel sensor technology as in O1), to processing and understanding the data (we use a combination of field and laboratory data combined with innovative machine learning techniques to make sense of the data in O2), to improved ways of visualizing and presenting new and existing data for advancing environmental science and decision making (we will develop an early warning system based on smart sensors and edge based architecture in O3 and will develop compelling visualizations to present data and aid decision making of individuals, communities and policy makers in O4).
Please see a webinar discussion on the project on YouTube below, and a video produced by University of Plymouth on this project (flatscreen version, though this was originally made for Immersive Vision Theatres)
Visualisation video of SENSUM produced by University of Plymouth
Landslides @ Exeter 