Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 2(AICCE'12 & GIZ' 12), pp. 119-123, 2013 Available online at http://www.cjasr.com ISSN: 2251-9114, ©2012 CJASR
AWAM International Conference on Civil Engineering & Geohazard Information Zonation
Early Warning System for Transmission Tower Landslide Hazard Monitoring in Malaysia Norashidah Md Din, Rohayu Che Omar, Aiman Ismail, Nor Hazwani Nor Khalid, Naoki Sakai*, Md Zaini Jamaludin, Mohd Zafri Baharuddin, Fairuz Abdullah, Salman Yussof Centre for Communications Service Convergence Technologies & Centre for Forensic Engineering College of Engineering, UNIVERSITI TENAGA NASIONAL Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, 43000 KAJANG SELANGOR, MALAYSIA * Storm, Flood and Landslide Research Department National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) 3-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0006 Japan
*Corresponding Author:
[email protected] A major number of transmission towers that networked the electricity distribution throughout Malaysia have been in existing for over 40 years and some traversed through very remote and high altitude areas like the Titiwangsa range that forms the backbone of the Malay Peninsula. The hazard risks on these towers are of a national concern. A joint project under JICA/JST and government of Malaysia has started in June 2011 that looked into developing an early warning system for monitoring landslide hazards at selected transmission towers. This paper reports on the challenges of the work and provides an overall concept of an early warning system design for a site in remote Kelantan. The early warning system for landslide monitoring concept comprise of consolidating satellite data, real time monitoring through ground sensors, geotechnical data and historical data of the site and coming up with a predictive decision support system for landslide warning. A centralized data acquisition system center located in UNITEN would integrate the data from the various sources and provide risk assessment through a decision support system for the site in Kelantan. A notification and escalation tool would be built in the decision support system that can notify the necessary stake holder of the landslide risk in the area. One main challenge is the site itself which is about 500m above sea level deep in the rainforest area of Kenyir. The site and surrounding area has been identified with signs of slope failure. Another point of design concern is the real time slope monitoring sensors reliability and data integrity from the remote area. Key words: Early warning System, Centralised Data Acquisition System
ensure tree growth is kept well away from hightension lines and the probability of a resulting disruption of service is low. The NYPA’s adaptation of GIS combines aerial and topographic maps, the location of all vegetation species, towers, roads, fences, pastures, rivers, lakes, wetland, and farms and nearby building in one working document. The GIS environment provides them an efficient road map in applying selective pruning and tree elimination efforts on a four-year cycle. Researchers in (Faisal Hj. Ali, 2006) made a case study on erosion hazards at Cameron
1. INTRODUCTION Of late, power utilities have been using Geographic Information System (GIS) systems for asset and condition monitoring of the transmission tower. The New York Power Authority for example has been managing vegetation growth using GIS along 1400 transmission miles across New York State (NYPA, 2012). About 16,000 of the 24,000 acres of land under NYPA’s right-of-way (ROW) require periodic monitoring and treatment through trimming and selective application of herbicide to
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Highlands’ catchment area. The highland catchment is considered an environmentally sensitive area where many land development for various activities such as agriculture, agro-tourism, property development and road-widening projects, had already been carried out and some are still on going as to-date. To develop the baseline database, acquisition of the latest Structure Plan, Satellite Imagery, topographical and rainfall information of the catchment area were carried out. Once this is done, real-time rainfall information was adopted to develop the early warning system. This was done by using solar-powered rain sensors, which would be triggered based on the rainfall amount and intensity. A SIM-card based GPRS transmitter, which is attached to the "rain sensing and transmission unit" would then send out e-mails at every minute interval, so that the data could be transferred to a receiving unit. The final processed values would then be set against the threshold values, which will trigger an early warning if any of the values exceeds the threshold limits. In this paper we looked at an early warning system for monitoring landslide hazards of transmission towers in Malaysia which is part of a JICA/JST project with the government of Malaysia (JICA/JST Five Year Project, June 2011- May 2016). One site was chosen as a case site. Section 2 describes the proposed project and Section 3 illustrates the conceptual framework for the project. Section 4 is on GIS modeling and system integration whereas Section 5 in the conclusion.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS 2.1. Location The stake holder, i.e. the utility company, requested the site for the study to be in a remote area. This is to provide a proof of concept on how remote areas can be monitored efficiently with the use of modern remote sensing, mapping, electronics and communication technology. The identified site lay along the transmission line shown in Figure 1. The transmission tower site is in the middle of the rain forest and can only be accessed through a 2-3 hours of journey that requires climbing a hilly terrain on foot. The elevation of area goes up to 500m. 2.2. Framework of Study Developing the early warning system for landslide slope monitoring of the transmission tower line require proper staging of work. The first stage requires the stake holder input on the site. Once this has been determined a site survey is then conducted. Hazard maps of the site will be generated based on site study and satellite data gathering. Localised telemetry instrumentation need to be provisioned and data capturing strategy determined for ground surveillance. Figure 2.0 shows the conceptual framework of the study. Whereby data from satellite, historical and ground telemetry data are being collected to be processed and integrated into a decision support system that can provide early warning system on the deteriorating condition of the area. A centralised data acquisition system center, known
Fig.1.0 Transmission Tower where one of the tower is under study
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as Geohazard Centralised Data Acquisition System (GCDAS), would integrate the data from the various sources and provide risk assessment through a decision support system for the site. A notification and escalation tool would be built in the decision support system that can notify the necessary stake holder of the landslide risk in the area. The GCDAS which will facilitate the integration of various data source will be GIS based. The bandwidth and processing power required need to be sized up accordingly for some respectable response time of the applications. Different processes have different speed effects. Therefore, depending on the processes that are added to an image service definition, the processing time may increase. The ground instrumentation at the base of the selected transmission tower site consists of a data logger, piezometer, moisture probe, inclinometer, and rain gauge and GSM/GPRS communication device. The instrumentation components are used to measure the ground water level, soil moisture, soil movement (changes in slope inclination) and rainfall intensity of the site. The effect of high voltage transmission line on the electrical signals from sensors to electronics equipment conducted at site is of concern and need to be addressed. This involves proper placement of sensors to deter the electromagnetic interference which include appropriate shielding and grounding of the equipment.
2.3 GIS Modeling and System Integration The early warning system is planned to be able to provide support for the operations and management of the utility company in managing the risk. A Web GIS environment is targeted to be the focal point for data convergence and risk management activities. An e-Community concept as shown in Figure 3.0 which was developed at National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), Japan (Yoshiharu Mochizuki, 2012) for disaster mitigation and management is proposed to be adapted to ease the risk communications at all levels from the support to the management chain in the transmission tower management. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION We have started to design and identify localised data collection at the respective transmission tower through respective data loggers. The data loggers are interfaced using proprietary programming environment and interfaced to the RF communication modules where data are clustered and using GSM transmitted to a monitoring office in UNITEN. The two most important parameters to observe are groundwater levels and displacement at the slopes. Piezometers are used for determination of water levels, inclinometers for monitoring slope movement and rain gauges for to measuring the amount of rainfall over time.
Fig. 2.0 Conceptual Framework of the Early Warning System
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Fig.3.0 Web GIS environment example from NIED Japan [4]
Figure 4.0 shows the data logging environment block diagram. Whereas, Figure 5.0 shows a
sample of GUI on sensor values received at the site.
Fig.4.0 The data logging environment.
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Fig. 5.0 Sample of the piezometer and rain gauge readings environment
4. CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
This paper describes the conceptualization of a project on early warning system for monitoring landslide hazards of a particular transmission tower site in Malaysia. The framework and conceptual view of the study were presented here. A Web GIS platform will be a focal point for integrating the satellite, ground, geotechnical and historical data for a comprehensive view of landslide hazards risks to the electrical transmission tower. The data will be first collected for base line establishment over a few months. The warning levels will then be determined in the work flow of the respective agency in order to support business continuity and proficiency of the agency.
NYPA (2012) website: http://www.nypa.gov/services/othertechnolog yprograms.htm, Access on 7/4/12 6.50pm. Faisal Hj. Ali, Tew Kia Hui (2006). A near real-time early warning system on erosion hazards, American Journal of Environmental Sciences, 2:146-153. JICA/JST Five Year Project (June 2011- May 2016) on The Project for Research and Development for Reducing Geo-Hazard Damage in Malaysia caused by Landslide and Flood. Yoshiharu Mochizuki, Yuichiro Usuda, Hitoshi Taguchi. Shinya Okada, Toshinari Nagasaka (2012). Utilization of Combined FOSS4G for Web Map Sharing and Stable Interoperability: A research project on Disaster Risk Information Platform “Dosai-DRIP”, Digital earth Lab Corporation, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention.
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