According to official figures, more than 100 million landmines lie buried around the world. Although intended for warfare, these mines remain active after warfare ends. Each day these mines are triggered accidentally by civilian activities, ravaging the land and killing or maiming innocent people. To help stop this destruction of the environment and humanity, the scientific community must develop effective humanitarian demining. Mine detection is especially vital to humanitarian demining. The goal of military demining is to clear enough mines quickly to allow troops through a land area. Military demining usually requires mine destruction rates of 80%. The goal of humanitarian demining, in contrast, is to clear enough mines to permit normal civilian use of the land (e.g., construction or agriculture). Humanitarian demining thus demands a destruction rate approaching perfection: UN specifications require a rate better than 99.6%. Of course, a critical aspect of mine clearance is mine detection. Before one can remove mines, one must locate them. To aid scientific inquiry into mine detection, this paper reviews the major current and developing technologies for mine detection. We do not claim to include every technology. Often the details of research intended for specific military applications are difficult to attain. This paper highlights significant studies of mine detection technologies, discussed in several recent conferences and in many recent articles and reports, to show promising directions for future research.
Bruschini, Claudio and Gros, Bertrand
"A Survey of Research on Sensor Technology for Landmine Detection,"
Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction: Vol. 2
, Article 3.
Available at: http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol2/iss1/3