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Quantification of reactivated landslide behaviour using acoustic emission monitoring

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Abstract

Slope failures world-wide cause many thousands of deaths each year and damage built environment infrastructure, costing billions of pounds to repair, resulting in thousands of people being made homeless and the breakdown of basic services such as water supply and transport. There is a clear need for affordable instrumentation that can provide an early warning of slope instability to enable the evacuation of vulnerable people and timely repair and maintenance of critical infrastructure. An approach, Assessment of Landslides using Acoustic Real-time Monitoring Systems (ALARMS) is described in the paper, and results of a field trial of sensors on an active landslide at Hollin Hill, North Yorkshire, UK, are described. Continuous and real-time monitoring of acoustic emission generated by the deforming slope has been compared to traditional inclinometer slope displacement measurements. Analysis of the results has established that there is a direct relationship between acoustic emission rate and displacement rate trends triggered by rainfall events. The technique has provided insight into reactivated slope movement kinematics.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to Steve and Josie Gibson (the Hollin Hill landowners) for their support and cooperation in the research. This paper is published with the permission of the Executive Director of the British Geological Survey (NERC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK

    N. Dixon, M. P. Spriggs & A. Smith

  2. British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, UK

    P. Meldrum & E. Haslam

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  1. N. Dixon
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  2. M. P. Spriggs
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  3. A. Smith
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  4. P. Meldrum
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  5. E. Haslam
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Correspondence to A. Smith.

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Dixon, N., Spriggs, M.P., Smith, A. et al. Quantification of reactivated landslide behaviour using acoustic emission monitoring. Landslides 12, 549–560 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0491-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0491-z

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