Ideas on Future Development of Field Monitoring

This chapter studies and discusses the further application of the inexpensive but accurate sensors that were originally developed by the authors for practical slope monitoring and early warning. The advantage of the sensors lies in their low cost and durability in harsh environments. In this viewpoint, four fields of further sensor application were picked up and herein discussed, which are the remote detection of the onset of landslide, the early warning of glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs), the interpretation of weak tremors for evaluation of the mechanical softening (deterioration or weathering) of materials in geotechnical structures and slopes and the forecast and early warning of volcanic eruptions. Some of them are quite new, while, for example, monitoring of volcanoes has a long history of successful warning. Whatever the current situation may be, the use of inexpensive but accurate sensors deployed at many sites can contribute to the more accurate detection of the problems.