New insights into the spatiotemporal precursory failure dynamics of the 2017 Xinmo landslide and its surrounds

Sentinel-1 data on the kinematics of the 2017 Xinmo landslide and its surrounds are studied to understand the precursory failure dynamics of a large region with a historical predisposition to landslides. We perform a systematic spatiotemporal analysis over a period of two years to identify high-risk regions and discriminate between their precursory failure dynamics. We found the 2017 Xinmo landslide source to exhibit a unique kinematic signature which can be distinguished, almost a year in advance, from those of other sites of instabilities. Findings pave the way for the development of a new framework that exploits these differences in the dynamics of motions to accurately predict the location and size of a catastrophic landslide, and distinguish it from false alarms and/or smaller land slips early in the pre-failure regime.