Volcano deformation monitoring with ArduSimple affordable GNSS/RTK

It has long been recognised that volcanoes and in particular its calderas deform as fluids migrate. The Rabaul Caldera in Papua Guinea is a type example of a caldera that undergoes complex and occasionally rapid deformation.

Monitoring these deformations with RTK technology is not something new, but historically has been an expensive task not affordable for all organizations: until 2018, measuring the movement over time of one single point with centimeter accuracy, meant a minimum budget of 10’000$.

Today, thanks to the launch of new generation RTK chipsets, with the same budget it is possible to measure 30 to 40 points, which provides a much more accurate tracking of these movements.

And the team of Steve Saunders from the Rabaul Volcano Observatory are currently on this journey and we are very happy to see their first results. If you are interested you can read more about it in the recently published paper Twenty-Two Years of GPS Monitoring at Rabaul Caldera, a Narrative History.

Do you want to start a project with centimeter accuracy but you are a bit lost? Contact us, we always answer within 24h!