Seismic monitoring for automatic rockfall detection along transportation corridor

This geophysical research presents the setup and the preliminary results of several experiments conducted to evaluate the performance of seismic monitoring to recognize low energy ground vibrations caused by small rock free fall or rock rolling along a slope. New ideas for automatic rockfall detection based on Short Time Average over Long Time average (STA/LTA) and fractal analysis of the seismic records are introduced. Different events of vibrations were tested, such as random noise, passing cars or people, rolling or throwing rocks or combination of passing car with rockfall. Based on the experimental results it was determined that more than 95% of car stimulated records are discarded while, more than 90 % of rockfalls or simultaneous car passing and rockfalls are successfully recognized.