Monitoring System of the debris flows in the basin of Rio Chiesa river
The Basin of the Rio Chiesa ( 1.2 sq km), located in the municipality of Livinallongo del Col di Lana ( BL), is regularly affected by events of debris flows that endanger the towns (especially Pieve di Livinallongo) and some important roads, creating dangerous conditions for the residents and the many tourists.
TERRASYSTEM, in a joint venture with UNISKY and within the European project Paramount, for ARPAV (Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Veneto), has created a monitoring and alerting system based on innovative sensors for the detection of the pass of debris flows.
The system consists of two substations:
- Mountain station, located in the head of the basin. This station is equipped with a hygrometer, a sonic anemometer, a colour webcam and a data transmission system.
- Valley station, located in the area of propagation in the vicinity of the sifting embankments. This station is equipped with a thermal camera for the detection of the movement of the debris and with some echo-sounders and tear cables.
The stations are managed by Advantech Industrial PCs and sensors interface cards Arduino. Power is supplied by especially dimensioned photovoltaic modules. GSM and UHF radio (ZigBee) technologies are used for the transmission of the data and alert signals.
When a flow occurs, the system sends alert messages via SMS to the bodies in charge of the public security. All data is transmitted to a remote dedicated server and stored in a PostgreSQL database. It is possible to view with internet the alert messages, the webcam images and data of all the sensors (tables and graphs) in real-time and to change some settings of the system through the web application TERRAStations, especially developed for the management of this system.
