Potential of satellite InSAR monitoring for landslide Failure Forecasting

In this work the potential of satellite InSAR data for the application of Failure Forecasting Methods (FFMs) is assessed. The main limits to the application of FFMs using satellite InSAR data consist of the low data temporal frequency and the high displacement rate affecting slopes before failure. Nevertheless, the increasing temporal resolution offered by new generation of satellites, is expected to improve the monitoring capability of the slopes during the tertiary creep phase. Four different forecasting techniques have been applied to 56 past landslides, in order to analyze the reliability of FFMs based on InSAR satellite data. Displacement data inferred from scientific literature were resampled, in order to simulate the satellite revisit time and the phase ambiguity constraint that affects satellite InSAR data. In some cases, our back-analysis shows that satellite InSAR monitoring could have been successful for forecasting the corresponding time of failure by using FFMs.