Improving landslide inventory with persistent scatterers in Calabria, Italy

Landslide inventory maps can benefit from the contribution of remote sensing technologies. We exploit PSI (Persistent Scatterer Interferometry) data extracted from ERS1/2 and RADARSAT-1 satellite images acquired in the intervals 1992–2001 and 2003–2010 respectively, for the detection and mapping of landslide ground displacements at regional scale. We propose a PSI-based procedure, based on the exploitation of activity matrices and intensity scales, combining the information coming from available pre-existing inventories and PSI average velocities. We apply this approach on the test area of Northern Calabria (Southern Italy), extended 4,410km2 and extensively affected by landslide hazard, finally updating and improving the landslide inventory of this area and assessing the spatial distribution, state of activity and intensity of 1,196 landslides, corresponding to 4.3% of the whole investigated territory.