Organization:
Emilia-Romagna Region (Region)

Brief description of the Organization:
Emilia-Romagna Region - Directorate General Land and Environmental Management - Geology, soil and seismic risk Area

Region:
Emilia-Romagna (Italy)

Description of the Challenge:
The challenge consists of a multi-scale remote sensing methodology for the identification and mapping of landslide phenomena triggered by intense rainfall events. The approach leverages free, medium-resolution satellite imagery (e.g., Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat) to investigate the entire regional territory, enabling preliminary screening and the detection of potential anomalies through change detection techniques that highlight differences between post-event and pre-event images.
The analysis can then focus on the most affected areas through the acquisition of high-resolution commercial imagery (e.g., PlanetScope, Maxar, Pléiades), which allows for manual mapping and the application of the same change detection techniques at a higher resolution. This requires either pre-event images or baseline average images against which to identify differences relative to the post-event images; these images must be well co-registered in order to obtain a stack that maximises the performance of the change detection.
The operational importance of a workflow for damage reconnaissance was tested during the May 2023 events. On that occasion, the inability to promptly acquire satellite imagery in the immediate aftermath of the event required operators to wait for the processing of imagery acquired from aerial surveys, delaying the start of landslide inventory activities by months.
This work demonstrates how the flexible integration of satellite data (free and commercial) with aerial surveys constitutes an effective strategy for remote sensing-based landslide mapping and damage reconnaissance.

Your Challenge in just one question:
How can we automate post-flood landslide monitoring by combining free and commercial satellite constellations to provide timely and cost-effective infrastructure risk maps?

Topics: 

• Earth Observation (EO)
• GNSS & Satellite Connectivity
• AI & Data Analytics
• Natural Resources Management (Water, Soil, Forest...)
• Emergency & Disaster Management
• Civil Protection & Security 

Expected role of Service Provider: 

• Data Supply & Processing 

Additional input: 

• Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem 

In the following links to some publications related to the topic developed following the events of May 2023:

• Testing NDVI and U-Net for automated mapping of multiple-occurrence regional landslide events using satellite and aerial multispectral data (Casola Valsenio, Emilia-Romagna, Northern Apennines, Italy) | Landslides | Springer Nature Link
• EGUsphere - Rapid Landslide Mapping During the 2023 Emilia-Romagna Disaster: Assessing Automated Approaches with Limited Training Data
• RER2023: the landslide inventory dataset of the May 2023 Emilia-Romagna event - Version 1