Slope ALARMS: Rail
Ripley, British Columbia, Canada

The Ripley landslide is a relatively small slow-moving translational failure that is known to have been active since 1951.

It poses a risk to critical infrastructure since both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific rail tracks run adjacent to each other along the entire breadth of the landslide.

In response to this threat, an extensive suite of monitoring technology is now being applied, including:

• monitoring using GPS stations and piezometers
• linear fibre optic sensing
• ShapeAccelArray (SAA)
• satellite based interferometry
• ground-based SAR and LiDAR

In addition, an active waveguide and Slope ALARMS system was installed at the site in November 2015 in collaboration with University of Alberta.

Progress and impact

Monitoring of AE generated by movement of the landslide is ongoing. Clear trends have been obtained between measured AE and displacement rates. The AE system continues to operate at large displacements (ie. >500mm).