Early Identification of Serious Geological Hazards with Integrated Remote Sensing Technologies: Thoughts and Recommendations

Since 2017, many serious geological disasters have been reported, including the 2017 mountain collapse at high altitudes in Xinmo Village in Mao County, Sichuan Province, and the 2018 Baige landslide in Jinsha River, most of which are of great destructive power and hard to detect in advance. It is worth noting that although the geohazard prevention has been carried out extensively across the whole country which is supported by the state, many of these geological disasters occur outside the potential geohazard points estimated in advance. The early identification of these undetectable geohazards points remains a big challenge and a crucial task in current geohazard prevention work. In this paper, the characteristics of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and its inherited limitations are summarized. Based on the integrated remote sensing technologies (including optical, SAR/InSAR and LiDAR), the key observation concept with three forms "morphology, deformation, situation" is proposed. Through the integration of a range of remote sensing technologies, the locations of potential geohazards will be identified qualitatively, and their associated movements will be monitored quantitatively. Finally, a series of thoughts and recommendations are provided to guide our future work for the early detection of serious geological hazards.