Passive radio-frequency identification ranging, a dense and weather-robust technique for landslide displacement monitoring

Abstract

Abstract Ground deformation monitoring at a local scale requires accuracy, along with dense spatio-temporal resolution. Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is proposed as an alternative to classical geodetic methods for monitoring displacements of a landslide. Passive RFID tags allow for a very dense resolution, both in time and space, at the scale of a 100-m-long surface. By deploying 19 passive RFID tags on a landslide for 5\u202fmonths, this study validates the technique by comparison with laser total station and wire extensometer data. The accuracy of the RFID technique was 1\u202fcm during normal weather and up to 8\u202fcm during snow events. The results demonstrate that RFID tag tracking can monitor landslide displacements with multiple sensors at low cost, providing dense spatio-temporal data. This technique could potentially be used for other applications such as monitoring volcanic activity, buildings, unstable rocks or snow cover.