Remote monitoring techniques for rehabilitated slope

¹ Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Monash University, 3800 VIC, Australia
² School of Engineering, Deakin University, 3216 VIC, Australia
³ Future Technologies, CoVE, RMIT University, 3000 VIC, Australia
⁴ AGL Loy Yang Pty Ltd, VIC, Australia
⁵ Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, 3800 VIC, Australia

^* Corresponding author: leslie.wong@monash.edu

Abstract

AGL Loy Yang has been intensively engaged and involved in research in the area of rehabilitated mining slopes. A proposal was raised to turn the Loy Yang mine pit into a lake after decommission (in three decades) to achieve safe and stable rehabilitation of the mines. The slope stability of these rehabilitated slopes is one of the major concerns. The slopes are hardly failed spontaneously. Instead, they usually provide indications of distress (cracks and erosion) over some time. Therefore, an ongoing monitoring system may provide valuable time to mitigate the progression of the failure. Distributed optical fibre sensing (DOFS) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are emerging new and innovative technologies for remote monitoring a large civil structure for early warnings, alerts and decision making. Both DOFS and UAV have been recently deployed at Loy Yang rehabilitated trial site. The preliminary results have demonstrated their reliability and practicality for these rehabilitated slope monitoring techniques. These remote sensing techniques are compared and discussed in terms of slope monitoring application.