31 Mar 2018

Sensing slips: a Kiwi innovation in landslide detection

From This Way Up, 12:30 pm on 31 March 2018
Abbotsford Disaster, Dunedin, 1979

Abbotsford Disaster, Dunedin, 1979 Photo: (Archives New Zealand CC BY 2.0)

About 66 million people – or about one percent of the world's population – currently work or live in places where there is a high risk of a landslide.

But knowing where and when a landslide will occur is currently more of an art than a science.

Now a team at Victoria University of Wellington hopes that a network of cheap GPS sensors could help us make accurate slip predictions at a fraction of the cost of a surveyor taking regular measurements with their instruments.

Nick Willis, Viclink's Commercialisation Manager, Engineering, shows us the system in operation near Wellington.