Development of a Solar Cell Powered Slope Monitoring System

It has been known that, the amount of rainfall in 24 hours exceeded 20% of the annual average rainfall could lead to natural disasters. In Korea, over half of the annual average rainfall is concentrated in the months of July, August and September. Consequently, natural disasters such as land slides and slope failures occur during these months. Land slides and slope failures have resulted in 318 deaths during the last ten years. This accounts for 24.4% of the total 1,314 deaths resulting from natural disasters. However, Korea’s policies against slope failures center on post-disaster actions and restoration. To prevent such damage from slope failures, it is need to install various detection sensors in areas prone to slope failure. However, in the case of the wired slope monitoring systems that are currently being utilized at some slope sites in Korea, maintenance of the systems is not easy if either the slope is too steep or is in danger of collapsing. In addition, since the slope sites are scattered all over the mountainous regions in Korea, the cost of installing power line for the system is high if the site is not nearby main power line. If the previous wired slope monitoring systems are integrated with high-tech USN technology, then limitations and problems of the previous systems can be dealt with and be addressed. The objective of this paper is to design and implement a real-time slope monitoring system using USN (Ubiquitous Sensor Network) technology and solar cell.