← Projects

Inform@Risk

Inform@Risk

AlpGeotech, working within the German/Colombian Inform@Risk research consortium, developed the low-cost geosensor network that gives residents of Bello Oriente, an informal hillside settlement in Medellín, Colombia. Advance warning of rainfall-triggered landslides.

Problem Statement

Bello Oriente, an informally urbanized neighborhood on the urban–rural fringe of Medellín, sits on steep, geologically unstable slopes that are highly susceptible to rainfall-induced landslides. Like many self-built settlements in Latin America, it grew without formal planning or hazard mapping, leaving residents with no monitoring infrastructure and effectively no advance warning before a slope failure.

Conventional landslide early-warning technology is typically too costly and too rigid to deploy at the scale and density required in informal settlements, so a fundamentally different, low-cost and participatory approach was needed one that could be installed, maintained and trusted by the community it protects.

Solution

As part of the four-year Inform@Risk research project (2018–2022), funded under Germany’s BMBF CLIENT II programme, AlpGeotech’s engineering team designed and built the project’s cost-effective IoT geosensor network: compact MEMS-based motion and tilt sensors distributed across the slope, transmitting continuous ground-movement data over the low-power, long-range LoRa protocol to a central gateway station.

Combined with rainfall monitoring and a participatory warning process co-designed with the Bello Oriente community, the system translates raw sensor readings into a warning residents can understand and act on. Working alongside German and Colombian universities, research institutes and local agencies, AlpGeotech’s instrumentation became the technical backbone of one of the first landslide early-warning systems purpose-built for an informal settlement.

The project concluded in December 2022 with a working prototype, which the Municipality of Medellín has since continued operating in test mode.

References

Other Projects

HPP Mestiachala

HPP Mestiachala

The I@R system monitors three high-alpine valleys in the Greater Caucasus using radar and geophone sensors and, in the event of an emergency, initiates an evacuation via traffic lights, sirens, and SMS/email alerts.

 Rockfall Monitoring at Hochvogel

Rockfall Monitoring at Hochvogel

In collaboration with the Technical University of Munich, AlpGeotech is conducting research at Hochvogel to develop the most accurate possible detection of rockfalls, which often serve as precursors to larger rockfall events.

 Inform@Risk

Inform@Risk

The early-warning system installed by AlpGeotech in Medellín, Colombia, issued warnings about local, rainfall-induced landslides that threatened informal settlements.

 Hauptbahnhof München

Hauptbahnhof München

During the renovation of Munich Central Station and the tunneling of the second main line, AlpGeotech is monitoring deformations in the roof structure using approximately 50 measurement nodes and automatically triggers an alarm in case of an emergency.

 S177 Wuenschendorf-Eschdorf

S177 Wuenschendorf-Eschdorf

AlpGeotech is monitoring ground settlement during the construction of the new Wünschendorf-Eschdorf bypass. This allowed the team to identify a progressive ground failure at an early stage and take corrective action.