XLIDE is a research project led by Oficina Técnica de Estudios y Control de Obras S.A. (OFITECO) with the participation of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering and the Department of Geomatics (IG). XLIDE is funded by the INNPACTO Subprogramme of the National Plan for Scientific Research 2008-2011, Ministry of Science and Innovation.

The main objective of XLIDE is the development of a novel technique which would enable the analysis and monitoring of the safety and security of critical infrastructures in relation to surrounding slope stability.

A full service engineering solution which supplies the information needed by the infrastructure operator to detect, monitor and analyze potential risk will be provided. This service will cover the selection of the optimal auscultation system based on the characteristics of the slope and the precision and type of information required. The following three aspects will be included for the methodology development: numeric modelling, auscultation system and interpretation method.

The IG contribution to XLIDE is the acquisition and processing of SAR images, used as auscultation system. The images are acquired by a terrestrial SAR (Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar), property of the IG and, subsequently processed using the in-house software.