RIPLEY LANDSLIDE – CANADA’S PREMIER LANDSLIDE FIELD LABORATORY

The Ripley Landslide site located some 10 km south of Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada is a small slow moving landslide that has been active for several decades. The slide impacts critical transportation infrastructure for Canada’s two major railway companies. Multi-national, multi-sectoral collaboration to study this landslide has provided a unique opportunity for researchers from around the globe to apply, test, assess and compare differing technologies during the past several years. Traditional and innovative, competitive and complementary, methods and techniques are continuously being integrated into the study to better evaluate monitoring and investigative results. This contribution briefly summarizes the broad list of methods applied to date and details progress on several new techniques being applied in 2017. Better mapping of Thompson River flanking the toe of the slide is being addressed using a real time 3D LiDAR sensor (Velodyne LiDAR PUCK) for calibrated measurements and a NORBIT – iWBMSc (Compact) wideband multi-beam sonar with tightly integrated INS (a Canadian private sector innovation developed through Government of Canada funding) to map the river bottom. Successful R&D by the British Geological Survey that developed the PRIME system employing emerging electrical resistivity tomography technology, innovative data telemetry, web portal access and intelligent monitoring systems is also being deployed to collect subsurface stratigraphic data and changing water moisture conditions.