Sar Amplitude Exploitation for Systematic Landslide Failure Detection

Quick detection of landslide occurrence is vital for disaster response. Optical sensors have proven to be effective to record the signs left by a landslide but they are not able to capture images through clouds or during the night. The all-weather and day-and-night active Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors that can operate in absence of solar light can potentially complement them. I hereby present the results of a literature review conducted in 2020 on the use of SAR amplitude-based products to detect the occurrence of landslides. The review has included nineteen papers with Digital Object Identifier published from 1995 to 2020 on this topic. Results reveal an increasing interest of the investigators on the use of SAR amplitude-based products to detect the occurrence of rapid landslides failures, but also some immaturity in the development of the theoretical framework, and a lack of standards in the description of the preprocessing and of the events. Lack of standards makes it difficult to confront the different methods and results and to fully foster a systematic use of SAR imagery for landslide detection.