Detection of anti-personnel landmines (APL) by integration of TEM-resistivity and IR surface temperature data

Abstract

Every year some 20.000 civilians are killed by landmines (UN estimates). Even if at the Ottawa Conference a convention against anti-personell landmines (APL) was signed, the old problem of mined areas remains still existent. Due to the Ottawa Convention there are following tasks among others: - mined are as must be identified, marked, and feneed as soon as possible, - all mines in these mined areas must be destroyed within 10 years. These problems up to now merely have been solved by deminers with different fully developed magnetic anomaly detection systems. Before the Ottawa Convention, mine producing industries have advertised their products under the aspects of "difficult or even impossible -detectability by conventional demining processes due to minimum iron content of the mines. Therefore the new task, which geophysics has to solve is as follows: detection of a very low conductive target in a very shallow depth from 5 cm to 20 cm. Additional disadvantage are the small sizes of the mines, which go down to diameters of approximately 5 cm. It is evident, that the methods being used must belong to those of remote sensing. In contrast to other geophysical targets a false result of measurement and interpretation will have catastrophic consequences. By UN a detection security of 99% is required. Additional demand is to reduce the rate of false alarm. From geophysical point of view this problem reminds of' 'squaring the circle