Deformation monitoring
Landslides, debris flows and rockfalls can endanger inhabitants and infrastructures. They have an important societal impact and may seriously damage the human and environmental resources of a region. However, it is still uneasy to forecast the evolution of a landslide o rockfall because it depends both on its dynamics and on external triggering events, such as earthquakes and rainfall.
Similarly, large engineering structures, which play an important role for the economy and society, have to be controlled in an adequate way to guarantee their functionallity and safety. In this context, deformation monitoring is essential to learn more on the physical processes controlling their movement and to attempt to predict their behaviour in time and space.
No less important is the preservation of tangible cultural heritage in archaeology and architecture. Both natural (earthquakes, tsunamis, floods…) and human-caused disasters (wars, urban development, pollution…) affect seriously the safeguard and conservation of archaeological sites, architectural monuments and movable objects, and require high-end geomatics monitoring solutions to take right preservation actions.
Deformation studies are currently based on a broad knowledge of suitable sensors and their potent, modern data storage and communication solutions and advanced processing and analysis methods. Additionally, a thorough understanding of the behaviour of monitoring objects and processes (e.g., large scale structure or landslide effected area), is essential to set-up and operate an optimum monitoring system. Innovative investigation, monitoring and mapping techniques are being developed in order to improve the methods for local and regional landslide hazard assessment and the design of early warning.
Under the auspices of three international scientific associations (FIG , IAG , and ISPRS), the Joint Symposium on Deformation Monitoring contributes periodically to the enhancement and dissemination of the state-of-the-art deformation monitoring.