Andrea Manconi

WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF · Climate Change, Extremes, and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Centre CERC

Multi-temporal, high-resolution, and homogeneous geospatial datasets acquired by space- and/or airborne sensors provide unprecedented opportunities for the characterization and monitoring of surface changes on very large spatial scales. Here, we demonstrate how an off-the-shelf, open-source image correlation algorithm can be combined with SwissALTI...

We present a procedure to detect landslide events by analyzing in-sequence data acquired from regional broadband seismic networks and spaceborne radar imagery. The combined used of these techniques is meant to exploit their complementary elements and mitigate their limitations when used singularly. To test the method, we consider a series of six sl...

Die Bewegungen und die kinematische Interpretation des Rutschungskomplexes von Brienz/Brinzauls (GR) sind Gegenstand detaillierter Untersuchungen. Sie liefern Grundlagen, um die Gefährdung des Dorfes zu beurteilen und entsprechende Massnahmen zu planen. Neben den klassischen Methoden Total Station (TPS), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) u...

We present a procedure to detect landslide events by analysing in sequence data acquired from regional broadband seismic networks and spaceborne radar imagery. The combined used of these techniques is meant to exploit their complementary elements and mitigate their limitations when used singularly. To test the method, we consider a series of six sl...

The increase of social media use in recent years has shown potential also for the identification of specific trends in the data that could be used to locate earthquakes. In this work, we implemented a pipeline that uses Twitter data to identify locations of earthquakes and use the information to trigger EO data analysis. We tested the pipeline for...

Investigating surface displacements in high alpine environments is often subject to challenges due to the difficult accessibility or harsh climatic conditions. Measurement systems have improved greatly in recent years regarding accuracy, range, or energy consumption. Continuously receiving high-precision, real-time monitoring data from a remote loc...

The long‐ and short‐term drivers and transport mechanisms of lunar rockfalls are currently not well understood, but could provide valuable information about the geologic processes that still shape the surface of the Moon today. Here, we compare the global distribution of rockfalls with relevant geophysical data, such as seismic, topographic, therma...

The region of Tajikistan where the Rogun Hydropower Project is currently under construction has experienced large and catastrophic slope failures in the past, often triggered by earthquakes. Co-seismic slope failures are thus common and pose a high hazard potential; however, to date, no specific analysis of slope activity in this area has been pres...

In this paper, we present examples of DInSAR-based measurement of surface displacements using a novel compact L-band SAR system that can be mounted on mobile mapping platforms such as a UAV or a car. The good DInSAR system performance is demonstrated and, particularly, we also show a use case in which a car-borne system setup is employed to map sur...

Rapid mapping of event landslides is crucial to identify the areas affected by damages as well as for effective disaster response. Traditionally, such maps are generated with visual interpretation of remote sensing imagery (manned/unmanned airborne systems or spaceborne sensors) and/or using pixel-based and object-based methods exploiting data-inte...

Landslides are geomorphological processes that shape the landscapes of all continents, dismantling mountains and contributing sediments to the river networks. Caused by geophysical and meteorological triggers, including intense or prolonged rainfall, seismic shaking, volcanic activity, and rapid snow melting, landslides pose a serious threat to peo...

Recent advances in satellite geodesy have improved our ability to map and monitor landslides globally with unprecedented resolution. Differential interferometry of space-borne synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) imagery plays a major role in identifying surface displacements associated with slope instabilities and monitoring their spatiotemporal evol...

This work discusses InSAR time series analysis using multi-reference stacks with exclusively short time intervals. A 5 months long stack of Sentinel-1 acquisitions over a high alpine territory that includes fast moving landslides is used. Use of the multi-look phases becomes problematic due to non-zero closure phase. The errors induced by non-zero...

Valley glaciers have traditionally been expected to significantly influence the stability and movement rates of adjacent paraglacial landslides. However, detailed studies related to the mechanical and displacement interactions between glacier ice and unstable rock slopes are very rare. Here we present a detailed in-situ investigation of the spatial...

We present a new inventory of large rock slope instabilities and an extensive structural data set for northwestern Bhutan. Our data set is largely based on satellite observations, such as optical images and high-resolution digital surface models, complemented with field observations. Kinematic analyses over seven different structural domains recogn...

Past exploration missions have revealed that the lunar topography is eroded through mass wasting processes such as rockfalls and other types of landslides, similar to Earth. We have analyzed an archive of more than 2 million high-resolution images using an AI and big data-driven approach and created the first global map of 136.610 lunar rockfall ev...

The analysis of rockfall distribution and magnitude is a useful tool to study the past and current endogenic and exogenic activity of Mars. At the same time, tracks left by rockfalls provide insights into the mechanical properties of the martian surface. While a wealth of high-resolution space-borne image data are available, manual mapping of displ...

We use multitemporal analyses based on Synthetic Aperture Radar differential interferometry (DInSAR) to study the slope adjacent to the large Punatsangchhu-I hydropower plant, a concrete gravity dam under construction in Bhutan since 2009. Several slope failures affected the site since 2013, probably as a consequence of toe undercutting of a previo...

Spaceborne radar interferometry is a powerful tool to characterize landslides at local and regional scales. However, its application to very slow rock slope deformations in alpine environments (displacement rates < 5 cm/year) remains challenging, mainly due to low signal to noise ratio, atmospheric disturbances, snow cover effects, and complexities...

Mapping landslides using automated methods is a challenging task, which is still largely done using human efforts. Today, the availability of high-resolution EO data products is increasing exponentially, and one of the targets is to exploit this data source for the rapid generation of landslide inventory. Conventional methods like pixel-based and o...

This paper presents a detailed analysis of a dramatic rock slope acceleration that occurred in fall 2016 at the Moosfluh Landslide, located at the glacier tongue of the Great Aletsch Glacier (Switzerland). The acceleration that occurred in 2016 was unanticipated and exposed the valley bottom and an adjacent damned lake to high risk. This accelerati...

Slope deformation in mountainous terrain can be driven by different processes, the nature of which is either gravitational and irreversible or seasonal and reversible, the latter induced by permafrost variations or by hydromechanical or thermomechanical effects. The importance of identifying such deformations is not only related to the hazard they...

TPS Data Moosfluh 2013-2018

Recent advances on satellite geodesy have boosted our capabilities to map and monitor landslides globally with unprecedented resolutions. In this scenario, differential interferometry of space borne synthetic aperture radar imagery (DInSAR) plays a major role in identifying surface displacements associated to slope instabilities and in monitoring t...

Recent advances on satellite geodesy have boosted our capabilities to map and monitor landslides globally with unprecedented resolutions. In this scenario, differential interferometry of space borne synthetic aperture radar imagery (DInSAR) plays a major role in identifying surface displacements associated to slope instabilities and in monitoring t...

In this work we present a methodology based on remote sensing data to map and classify unstable slopes in high alpine areas and apply this methodology to the Himalaya of northwestern Bhutan. We leverage on radar images acquired by the ESA Envisat and the JAXA ALOS-1 satellites between 2007 and 2011. Synthetic aperture radar differential interferome...

Despite landslides impact the society worldwide every day, landslide information is inhomogeneous and lacking. When landslides occur in remote areas or where the availability of optical images is rare due to cloud persistence, they might remain unknown, or unnoticed for long time, preventing studies and hampering civil protection operations. The un...

LPSC 50 Abstract #1595: LUNAR ROCKFALL DETECTION AND MAPPING USING DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS; Paper available here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8587120

Rock slopes next to the tongue of the Great Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland are characterized by rapid environmental adjustment to non-glacial conditions. This study investigates and describes in detail the historic development of the largest rock slope instability in this area, calledMoosfluh Landslide.Westudy in detail the structure, evolution and s...

We present an approach to manage Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetric data acquisition in areas with steep slopes, i.e., typical conditions of high mountain environments prone to slope instabilities and potentially to catastrophic failures. Starting from the Mission Planner from Ardupilot, an open access and widely used UAV flight planning...

This paper implements a novel approach to automatically detect and classify rockfalls in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter narrow angle camera (NAC) images using a single-stage dense object detector (RetinaNet). The convolutional neural network has been trained with a data set of 2932 original rockfall images. In order to avoid overfitting, the initial...

This study implements a novel approach to automatically detect and classify rockfalls in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images using a single-stage dense object detector (RetinaNet). The convolutional neural network has been trained with a data set of 2,932 original rockfall images. In order to avoid overfitting, the initial...

We evaluate the performance of the low-cost seismic sensor Raspberry Shake to identify and monitor rockfall activity in alpine environments. The test area is a slope adjacent to the Great Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps, i.e. the Moosfluh deep-seated instability, which has recently undergone a critical acceleration phase. A local seismic network...

We present an approach to manage Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetric data acquisition in areas with steep slopes, i.e., typical conditions of high mountain environments prone to slope instabilities and potentially to catastrophic failures. Starting from the Mission Planner from Ardupilot, an open access and widely used UAV flight planning...

We evaluate the performance of the low-cost seismic sensors Raspberry Shake (RS) to identify and monitor rock fall activity in alpine environments. The test area is a slope adjacent to the Great Aletsch glacier in the Swiss Alps, i.e. the Moosfluh deep-seated instability, which is undergoing an acceleration phase since the late summer 2016. A local...

In the Alpine region, the long-term evolution of rock slopes is punctuated by failures producing rapid mass wasting causing severe damages. Accurate location, timing and event’s magnitude of slope failures is important to better understand the effects of local and regional predisposing factors and the relationship with potential triggers. Despite,...

In Switzerland, more than 60% of the territory is mountainous and 25% of population live in the Alps. Despite being a main natural resource attracting every year millions of tourists, this peculiarity exposes the country also to mountain hazards due to gravitational slope processes (e.g. deep seated deformations, rock avalanches, rock falls, debris...

We propose a new algorithm based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to systematically process images acquired from time-lapse cameras (TLC) and retrieve displacement time series over active slopes. The aim of this work is to maximize the information obtainable from large datasets of TLC digital images acquired with different light and meteorologica...

We evaluate the capability of three different digital image correlation (DIC) algorithms to measure long-term surface displacement caused by a large slope instability in the Swiss Alps. DIC was applied to high-resolution optical imagery taken by airborne sensors, and the accuracy of the displacements assessed against global navigation satellite sys...

Triggering quakes in a geothermal space Enhanced geothermal systems (EGSs) provide a potentially clean and abundant energy source. However, two magnitude-5 earthquakes recently occurred in South Korea during EGS site development. Grigoli et al. and Kim et al. present seismic and geophysical evidence that may implicate the second of these earthquake...

We leverage on optical and radar remote sensing data acquired from the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinels to monitor the surface deformation evolution on a large and very active instability located in the Swiss Alps, i.e., the Moosfluh rock slope. In the late summer 2016, a sudden acceleration was reported at this location, with surface velocity...

In situ resource exploitation will play an important role in the establishment of a permanent lunar base. Past and current missions with their increasing spatial and spectral resolution have provided a wealth of in-situ and remote sensing data that enables a localization of these resources. Strategies need now to be developed to identify the most p...

Digital Image Correlation techniques (DIC) are used to exploit multitemporal image stacks and track surface displacements. The increasing availability of high resolution imagery acquired from different sources (e.g., spaceborne, airborne, UAV) allows nowadays to apply DIC for pre-failure detection and/or monitoring of active slope instabilities. O...

We evaluate the low-cost seismic sensors Raspberry Shake (RS) to identify and monitor rock fall activity in alpine environments. The test area is a slope adjacent to the Great Aletsch glacier in the Swiss Alps, i.e. the Moosfluh deep seated instability, which is undergoing an acceleration phase since the late summer 2016. A local seismic network co...

Monitoring is essential to understand the mechanics of landslides, and predict their behavior in time and space. In this work we discuss the performance of multi-sensor monitoring techniques applied to measure the kinematics and the landslide hydrology of Portalet landslide complex, which is located in the SW-facing slopes of Petrasos peak at the b...

Mass wasting events occurring on the Earth’s surface may induce seismic signals, which can be recorded also at tens of kilometers from the source area. The waveforms relevant to mass wasting differ from those caused by earthquakes, because they are usually characterized by a cigar shaped waveform, duration of several tens of seconds, and low freque...

The recent development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been increasing the number of technical solutions that can be used to monitor and map the effects of natural hazards. UAVs are generally cheaper and more versatile than traditional remote-sensing techniques, and they can be therefore considered as a good alternative for the acquisition o...

Seismic techniques are increasingly adopted to detect signals induced by mass movements and to quantitatively evaluate geo-hydrological hazards at different spatial and temporal scales. By analyzing landslide-induced seismicity, it is possible obtaining significant information on the source of the mass wasting, as well as on its dynamics. However,...

This paper presents a methodology taking advantage of the GPOD-SBAS service to study the surface deformation information over high mountain regions. Indeed, the application of the advanced DInSAR over the arduous regions represents a demanding task. We implemented an iterative selection procedure of the most suitable SAR images, aimed to preserve t...

We propose a new real-time approach to detect, locate, and estimate the volume of rockslides by analyzing waveforms acquired from broadband regional seismic networks. The identification of signals generated by rockslides from other sources, such as natural and/or induced earthquakes, is accomplished by exploiting the ratio between local magnitudes...

In order to evaluate the exploitation of broad-band seismic networks for landslide characterization , we selected a number of well known mass movements occurred in the Italian Alps, characterized by volumes ranging between 25.000 and 34.000.000 cubic meters and different failure dynamics. We analyzed the related seismic signals recorded by seismic...

We present a case study for detecting the four-dimensional (4-D) displacement of rift zones affected by large-magnitude deformation, by using spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Our method relies on the combination of displacement time series generated from pixel offset estimates on the amplitude information of multitemporal SAR images...

The analysis and interpretation of ground deformation plays an important role in monitoring activities aimed at ensuring the safety of people and/or infrastructure in geohazard scenarios such as earthquakes, volcanic activity and landslides. Nowadays, a wide spectrum of instruments and methods is available, ranging from in-situ to remote sensing ap...

Straightforward communication of monitoring results is of major importance in emergency scenarios relevant to large slope instabilities. Here we describe the communication strategy developed for the Mont de La Saxe rockslide threatening La Palud and Entrèves hamlets in the Courmayeur municipality (Aosta Valley, Italy). Starting from the definition...

We apply failure forecast models by exploiting near-real-time monitoring data for the La Saxe rockslide, a large unstable slope threatening Aosta Valley in northern Italy. Starting from the inverse velocity theory, we analyze landslide surface displacements automatically and in near real time on different temporal windows and apply straightforward...

In this work, we analyze the characteristics of snow cover using two space borne products (Level 1C and Level 2A) provided by the SPOT4 Take 5 Initiative. The principal aim of this initiative is to evaluate the benefits of Sentinel 2 acquisition mode before its launch. We processed SPOT4 images acquired from February 2013 to June 2013 over the site...