A New Landslide Early Warning Technology—Escorting for Life

Abstract

With vast territory, large latitude and longitude span, and complex geographical conditions, China is often subjected to various types of landslides that present unique characteristics in their forming and evolving. China suffers a lot from a great variety of geological disasters, which usually incur severe damages. As a developing country, China strongly relies on its natural resources in economic and social development. However, large-scale economic construction and resource exploitation have induced numerous landslides, making China one of the worst countries in the whole world that lie under the great damage caused by different kinds of landslides. Landslide is a major threat to the safety of people’s lives and property. The focus of landslide prevention has always been the identification of the precursor of the occurrence of landslide as well as the early warning of its occurrence towards people in the disaster area. Building on traditional landslide monitoring and early warning methods, this paper presents a set of new and effective technology. The new technology has three advantages: efficiency, cost-effective, and easy to operate. It is an effective alternative, supplement and upgrade of the traditional method, able to function with greater efficiency, speed and flexibility. Equipped with this new technology, messages concerning the upcoming landslide could be delivered to people in the first place. Meanwhile, warnings could be sent to the emergency centers across the landslide areas automatically through the synchronization within the system. In this way, people are better informed, enabling them to take the initiative to cope with the disaster before it strikes. Moreover, casualties due to delayed informing of disaster could be avoided, and losses arising in the hazard could be reduced to the minimum. Thus, it is paramount to apply and promote this new landslide early warning technology.