Landslide monitoring through satellite and ground-based radar interferometry

Remote sensing is gradually increasing its importance in landslides monitoring applications. SAR Interferometry (InSAR), which represents an important branch of remote sensing, is valuable to landslides studies because of its capability to measure the ground displacements with millimeteric accuracy. In this paper we are going to present some examples of our studies on landslides monitoring in Italy using InSAR technique. We have included both and space-bourn InSAR in our studies. As for the ground-based InSAR, we utilized the portable InGrID-LiSA system and successfully monitored the landslides movements during the explosion period of Stromboli Volcano. For the space-bourn InSAR we mainly focus on the Permanent Scatterers (PS) technique which is a recently developed InSAR approach and produces radar benchmarks derived from a multi-interferogram analysis of SAR images. PS technique shows the advantage of removing temporal decorrelations and atmospheric artifacts which are considered as the limiting factors of differential InSAR techniques. Our successful studies in Italy indicate the significances of InSAR in landslides monitoring applications: it contributes to the landslides inventory updating, landslides interpretation, establishing early warning system and emergency management. The usefulness of InSAR shows the impo rtance not only to the landslides scientists but also to the policy makers in the government department.