Flood Hazard Modelling in Upper Mandakini Basin of Uttarakhand

Floods in Himalayan region raise serious concerns regarding ongoing path of development as recent manifestations of catastrophic events establish link between climate changes and risk to anthropogenic activities in mountainous regions. Scientists predict frequent occurrence of such disasters wherein rapid glacial melting; incidents of glacial lake outburst and weather extremes may trigger floods in the Himalayan mountains. This paper examined flood risk in Upper Mandakini basin through GIS based flood simulationto highlight flood potential and risk associated with such hazard in the study area.It is observed that floods in study area display hazardous interplay of natural terrain gradient, high kinetic energy of streams, and intense rainfall. The upper sections of basin that includes Kali Ganga, Mandani Ganga, Madhyamaheshwar and Mandakini rivers shows high flood susceptibility with greatest risk in the latter. Such hazardousness is likely to be intensified by ongoing anthropogenic activities in the basin.

Detection of “Legbreaker” Antipersonnel Landmines by Analysis of Aerial Thermographic Images of the Soil

An automatic detection methodology for “legbreaker” Antipersonnel Landmines (APL) was developed based on digital image processing techniques and pattern recognition, applied to thermal images acquired by means of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) equipped with a thermal camera. The images were acquired from the inspection of a natural terrain with sparse vegetation and under uncontrolled conditions, in which prototypes of “legbreaker” APL were buried at different depths. Remarkable results were obtained using a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier, reaching a 97.1% success rate in detecting areas with the presence of these artifacts.

Cockroaches adjust body and appendages to traverse cluttered large obstacles

To traverse complex natural terrain, animals often transition between locomotor modes. It is well known that locomotor transitions can be induced by switching in neural control circuits or be driven by a need to minimize metabolic energetic cost. Recent work discovered that locomotor transitions in complex 3-D terrain cluttered with large obstacles can also emerge from physical interaction with the environment controlled by the nervous system. To traverse cluttered, stiff grass-like beams, the discoid cockroach often transitions from using a strenuous pitch mode to push across to using a less strenuous roll mode to maneuver through the gaps, during which a potential energy barrier must be overcome. Although previous robotic physical modeling demonstrated that kinetic energy fluctuation from body oscillation generated by leg propulsion can help overcome the barrier and facilitate this transition, the animal was observed to transition even when the barrier still exceeds kinetic energy fluctuation. Here, we further studied whether and how the cockroach makes active adjustments to facilitate this locomotor transition to traverse cluttered beams. We observed that the animal flexed its head and abdomen, reduced hind leg sprawl, and used both hind legs differentially during the pitch-to-roll transition, which were absent when running on a flat ground. Using a refined potential energy landscape with additional degrees of freedom modeling these adjustments, we found that head flexion did not substantially reduce the transition barrier, whereas the leg sprawl reduction did so dramatically. We discussed likely functions of the observed adjustments and suggested future directions.

Working Model of Rocker Bogie Mechanism (Earth Rover)

The Paper work "Rocker Bogie mechanism Geo-survey Rover" deals with attempt of improving the rover from its previous designs. The Geo-survey rover has got to operate rough and harsh environments that it had been designed but several factors restrict its operational capabilities, therefore the focus of our research is to overcome restrictions or to decrease it to within an acceptable range for its smooth performance.. The rover has been completely made from PVC to increase its capability to withstand shocks, vibrations and mechanical failures caused by the tough environment where it's operated on. NASA made and developed this mechanism to use it on Space missions. Whereas these bogies are also preferred by many earthly situations where human interference is needs to be neglected. Usual mobility designs are complicate, using many wheels or legs. It is a multi-wheeled rover capable of travel through rough terrain using an effective higher degree of mobility. Drive train simplicity is the effective mechanical feature of the rocker bogie design, which is accomplished by using only six motors for mobility. All motors are located inside the body where thermal variation is kept to a minimum which increases reliability and efficiency. Six wheels are used because there are few obstacles on natural terrain that need both front wheels of the rover to climb simultaneously. A series of mobility experiments within the agriculture land, rough roads, inclined, stairs and obstacles surfaces concluded that rocker bogie can achieve a long way traverses on field.

A Landslide Monitoring System for Natural Terrain in Korea: Development and Application in Hazard Evaluations

This study describes the development of a landslide monitoring system for the purpose of reducing damages caused by landslides in natural terrain. The system was developed to analyze the effects of landslide-inducing rainfall and the behavior of slopes through 12 monitoring stations that are distributed across eight national parks in Korea. Several sensors and a data acquisition equipment to monitor landslide were installed in each station. The composition of the system and its operating program were designed to efficiently manage the sizeable amounts of real-time monitoring data that are collected from the various stations. To test the potential of the developed system for reliable landslide hazard evaluations, data measured over a five-year period by the two monitoring stations in Jirisan National Park were analyzed. Subsequently, the suction stress of the soil over the monitoring period was calculated by applying laboratory test result of the geotechnical and unsaturated soil properties in the analysis domain area. The infinite slope stability analysis combined with an effective stress concept based on the suction stress was applied to calculate the factor of safety. This method also enabled the temporal and quantitative evaluation of slope stability in natural terrain. In addition, based on the monitoring and slope stability analysis results, an analysis for the spatial classification of landslide hazards was conducted. The analysis results quantitatively and statistically demonstrated that 98% of historical landslide initiation areas were classified as high hazard levels.

Verification of Model Accuracy and Photo Shooting Efficiency of Large-Scale SfM for Flight Path Calculation

In drone photography of vast natural terrain, it is difficult to know in advance the exact location and shape of an object. In addition, there are many time and location constraints in such environments; therefore, it is desirable to capture images quickly by automatic flight. The authors had previously proposed a method to determine the safety of such an automatic flight photography plan in advance and capture photographs quickly. The method was designed to model an object from the safety zone using multiple drones and determine a safe path in advance. However, further improvement in the efficiency was necessary when photographing the object over a large area. In contrast, in this study, to improve the efficiency of the safe flight path determination method for large-scale subjects, we developed a new method to model each number of photographs using structure from motion (SfM) and verify the accuracy of the model obtained for each number of photographs in advance. In addition, by determining the appropriate number of shots based on the results obtained and reducing the loss of time and battery during shooting, we verified the extent to which the total flight time could be reduced for a flight path of shooting a large-scale object in the Esan Prefectural Natural Park. In the case of the Esan Prefectural Natural Park, we demonstrate that the difference in the small-object shooting time was not a problem, but the difference was significant for shooting large objects. The effectiveness of determining and applying, in advance, the number of shots that provides appropriate accuracy is demonstrated.