TXT-tool 2.039-3.2 Ground-based remote sensing techniques for landslides mapping, monitoring and early warning

Abstract

The current availability of advanced remote sensing technologies in the field of landslide analysis allows rapid and easily updatable data acquisitions, improving the traditional capabilities of detection, mapping and monitoring, optimizing field work, and allowing to investigate hazardous and inaccessible areas while granting at the same time the safety of the operators. In the recent years in particular, ground-based remote sensing techniques have undergone a significant increase of usage, thanks to their technological development and quality data improvement, offering advantages with respect to air or spaceborne remote sensing techniques, in terms of data spatial resolution and accuracy, fast measurement and processing times, and portability and cost-effectiveness of the acquiring instruments. These advantages can be highlighted in the framework of landslide emergency management, when it is often urgently necessary to minimize survey time when operating in dangerous environments and gather all the required information as fast as possible. In this paper, the potential of some ground-based remote sensing techniques and the effectiveness of their synergic use is explored in several case studies, analyzing different slope instability processes at different scales of emergency or post-emergency management. Thanks to them and to the support of existing bibliography, the most common fields of application are suggested for all the considered ground-based sensor technologies and their level of effectiveness is evaluated in relation to the dynamics of landslide types.