Scientific knowledge advancements on landslide phenomena

Advancing the understanding of the vulnerability to landslides of different types of elements at risk. This will include:

• enhanced frequency-size (area, volume) statistics of landslides and their relationships with the regional physiographical setting
• an improved understanding of the environmental (morphological, geological, hydrological, of land cover and use) factors – and their short and long term temporal and geographical changes – that control the initiation and development of landslides, caused by different triggers.

Innovative methodologies and related implementation tools

Including geo-processing SW tools, for improved landslide detection and mapping exploiting EO data, and for landslide susceptibility and vulnerability modelling. Statistically based procedures for the accurate detection of event landslides in different physiographic settings will be designed, and tested. Advanced methods based on stereoscopic and pseudo-stereoscopic satellite images for the detection of subtle terrain and land cover changes indicative of slope failures will be explored. This will allow for future automatic recognition of landslides from 3D imagery. Flexible geo-processing SW tools for landslide susceptibility assessment at different geographical scales and adopting different terrain mapping units will be developed, tested and deployed.

General and site specific products

Useful for the vulnerability and impact assessment of landslides including:

• accurate landslide datasets and related frequency-size statistics,
• landslide susceptibility models and associated terrain zonations for selected test sites, and
• landslide impact assessments and scenarios for the selected test sites.

Standards and best practices

For landslide mapping, landslide susceptibility modelling and zonations, and for landslide vulnerability and impact assessments.

A prototype “blue-print” for pre-operational service

Supporting decision making for landslide mitigation and preparedness, and for effective post-event recovery and reconstruction activities.