Construction solid waste landfills: risk assessment and monitoring by fibre optic sensing technique

Abstract

The development of underground spaces generates large amounts of construction wastes, which are generally disposed for the landfill outside of the city in China. This study briefly reviewed a landslide tragedy of a CSW landfill in China; Lessons learned from the failure of risk assessment and preventions were discussed, which showed that two challenging strategies are significant for the risk identification and mitigation. One is the effective early warning system based on field large-deformation measurement; the other is the efficient risk assessment with internal deformation data. To this end, a new sensing method is developed for the large-deformation measurement inside CSW landfills. The proposed fibre-optic based transducer can measure large deformation of up to 1200 mm with a high accuracy. Finally, the risk assessment of CSW landfill was proposed with the combined use of field monitoring data and risk evaluation model. The theoretical equations for stability analysis and potential application framework for the application of this technique in the risk assessment of CSW landfill landslide are presented. This approach possesses the advantages of capturing excessive and irregular deformation of solid waste landfills and of efficient response for the risk mitigation with the help of early warning system. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.