Solid Earth
Landslides are a major global hazard, controlled by geology, weather and land-use, and also a major secondary hazard in most continental earthquakes. Recent catastrophic landslides in China and elsewhere have demonstrated the importance of understanding this hazard and of developing early-warning systems. Developing and validating Earth Observation (EO) technologies for the detection and monitoring of landslide hazards meets the Sentinel mission objective of geological hazard mapping. EO allows hazard assessments to be made and enable improved planning, design and early warning systems. In our Dragon-1/2/3/4 projects, we have successfully employed InSAR to map a range of active landslides in different regions of China, e.g. the Badong, Xintan, Shuping, Heifangtai and Maoxian landslides. In this project, we aim to further develop advanced SAR and optical techniques to detect potential landslides across the whole Jinsha River region, and demonstrate EO-based landslide early warning system over selected landslides. The main objectives of the project are as follows: O1. Integrate various SAR/InSAR/Optical techniques to generate surface deformation maps for extremely-slow to very-slow moving to slow-moving landslides. O2. Combine various SAR and optical datasets to generate surface deformation maps for slow-moving to fast-moving landslides. O3. Utilise deep learning techinques to automatically detect landslides based on surface deformation maps. O4. Determine the geophysical mechanisms responsible for landslides and provide a quantitative risk assessment along the Jinsha River region. O5. Demontrate GNSS-based landslide early warning system on selected sites. We expect that this project will lead to: (1). A processing chain to integrate Conventional InSAR, pixel offset tracking of radar and optical amplitude measurements and a time series tool. (2). Optimized ways to combine satellite radar and optical images for automatic detection of fast-moving landslides (3). Demonstration of landslide early warning system (4). Around 15 young researchers in China and Europe trained in the landslide field by the end of this Dragon-5 project (5). Regular academic exchanges between China and Europe (6). Joint workshops with young researchers involved (7). Joint publications in high impact journals This project is a collaboration among eleven institutions in China and the EU/UK. We will take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Dragon framework for Chinese-European exchange. We plan joint workshops in China for young postdoctoral scientists and students. Young scientists will also take part in exchanges, e.g. visits by Chinese scientists to work on InSAR at the UK universities, field visits to China by UK scientists. This project will be supported by (1) National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [41571337] (PI: Qiming Zeng) (2) China Earthquake Administration [ZDJ2018-16] (PI: Jingfa Zhang) (3) National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [41874005] (PI: Chaoying Zhao) (4) National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [41941019] (Co-I: Wu Zhu) (5) UK Natural Environment Research Council [NE/K010794/1] (Newcastle PI: Zhenhong Li) (6) UK Natural Environment Research Council [COMET] (Newcastle PI: Zhenhong Li)
