The necessity for monitoring geo-risk areas such as rock slides is growing due to the increasing probability of such events caused by environmental change. Europe is one leader in survey technology, due to well-established providers of measurement systems and frameworks. In Europe, rock slides cause increasing damage particularly in alpine areas.

DE-MONTES provides an efficient, highly automated, high-resolution, terrestrial, long range sensing measurement and analysis system which is able to monitor geo-risk (and related) objects by means of non-signalized natural target points – which is a key to such systems due to the lack of reachability and the required distance-to-the-object. Even novel sensor concepts such as terrestrial laser scanning can only cover a subset of the requirements, they limit the distance of application to 1-2 km and do not provide the ability to track individual surface points in high resolution – an important feature to detect regions of motion early enough for taking measures of protection, warning inhabitants, closing infrastructure or evacuation.

The main step beyond currently available techniques lies in the introduction of a novel modular suite of terrestrial visual survey sensors, namely Image Assisted Total Stations (IATS, used to perform long-range high-resolution measurements on single points) and Terrestrial long-range laser scanners (TLS, used to survey large areas). The envisaged system, developed by the R&D partners, incorporates the sensors, their control & data processing, and a framework that enables an expert user (geodesist / geologist) to operate the software. Applications, test environments and verification procedures are provided by the SME partners.

Link: http://www.de-montes.eu/