The necessity for monitoring geo-risk areas such as rock slides is growing due to the increasing probability of such events caused by environmental change. Europe is one leader in survey technology, due to well-established providers of measurement systems and frameworks. In Europe, rock slides cause increasing damage particularly in alpine areas.

DE-MONTES provides an efficient, highly automated, high-resolution, terrestrial, long range sensing measurement and analysis system which is able to monitor geo-risk (and related) objects by means of non-signalized natural target points -- which is a key to such systems due to the lack of reachability and the required distance-to-the-object. Even novel sensor concepts such as terrestrial laser scanning can only cover a subset of the requirements, they limit the distance of application to 1-2 km and do not provide the ability to track individual surface points in high resolution -- an important feature to detect regions of motion early enough for taking measures of protection, warning inhabitants, closing infrastructure or evacuation.

Contact: Chair of Geodesy, TUM www.geo.bgu.tum.de