IIT Mandi showcased indigenously developed Landslide Monitoring System for Disaster Management at IInvenTiv

The landslide monitoring system developed by Indian institute of Technology Mandi Researchers is low-cost compared to the conventional monitoring system. The selling price of the system with its sensors and alerting mechanism is about a lakh of rupees, which is 100-200 times less than a conventional counterpart that costs in crores.
The developed system is indigenously developed and made-in-India. The machine learning algorithms developed and published recently depict options of predicting soil movements, at least a day ahead, while currently the efforts are to scale it to a week’s scale. The research has been funded by NDMA, HP SDMA, DRDO, DST, and HPSCSTE.
The Landslide Monitoring and Early Warning System device have been developed by Dr. Varun Dutt, Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, and Dr. K.V. Uday, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, IIT Mandi.

Landslides are currently predicted 10 minutes before they actually occur by monitoring changes in soil movement. The Landslide Monitoring System developed by IIT Mandi provides soil movement alerts via hooters and blinkers mounted on the road and dispatched remotely via text message. Also, the system sends rainfall alerts if more than 5 mm of rain is forecast.
IIT Mandi team have received landslide monitoring system (LMS) deployment projects from a number of Himachal Pradeh districts including Mandi, Kinnaur, and Kangra. The project with district Kinnaur, Mandi and Kangra have already started. These projects will cause Himchal Pradesh state-wide deployment of LMSs, the largest number of LMS deployments in India.
IIT Mandi also signed a MoU with the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) Mandi and DDMA Kangra. The purpose of the MOU is to work towards the development of Landslide Monitoring and Early Warning Systems at certain sites. Early Warning Systems (EWS) will be developed and deployed based upon site visits and analysis of these sites as per InSAR- based analysis and in confirmation with the District Administration.
Intiot Services Pvt. Ltd. (iIoTs), the startup incubated with IIT Mandi Catalyst, has also partnered in projects from district Mandi and Kinnaur for manufacturing and deployments of LMSs. iIoTs has also bagged a LMS order from district Kolhapur for deployments in Maharashtra.
The Landslide Monitoring System provides soil movement alerts via hooters and blinkers installed on the road remotely via text message.  Additionally, the system sends rainfall alerts in advance if more than 5 mm of rain is predicted. Landslides are predicted 10 minutes before they actually occur by monitoring changes in soil movement. The system also predicts extreme weather events with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

The prototypical device was first deployed in July-August 2017, at an active landslide area on the Gharpa hill near IIT Mandi’s Kamand campus. The first field deployment was at Kotropi Landslide in 2018 with the support from the District Administration at Mandi.
Landslides are the third biggest natural disasters in the world, with India experiencing the biggest bulk of them – 15% of India is prone to landslides. More than 5,000 people are buried alive under landslides costing the economic losses of more than INR 26,000 crores suffered every year globally.