Studying multi-hazards from space

Landslides and floods triggered by earthquakes pose a great threat to human life and infrastructure. Currently, research into mitigation of these natural hazards has focused on events triggered during or shortly after earthquakes; for example, the failure of a slope shortly after a seismic event.

However, the long-term seismic effects that cause unstable landslides to accelerate without immediate failure are largely neglected. A new project, ‘Advancing knowledge of multi-hazards processes and their impact’ (AMHEI), aims to fill this research gap by looking at slope dynamics following a major earthquake and how these processes can also affect flood hazards.

There is currently little research into earthquakes affecting landslides and flooding in the longer term. We are excited to be able to utilise latest satellite technologies to better understand the relationships between these hazards.

Alessandro Novellino, BGS Remote Sensing Geoscientist.

AMHEI will use the latest satellite technologies, including Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) combined with artificial intelligence techniques, to map and identify relationships between natural hazards in Turkey, using the February 2023 earthquake as a case study.

Funded by the European Space Agency, the project will be led by Alessandro Novellino, a remote sensing geoscientist at BGS, in collaboration with colleagues at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation at the University of Twente (Netherlands) and the University of Bergen (Norway).