Title: An Automated Method for Detecting Rainfall-induced

Landslide Inventories for Bangladesh based on Remote

Sensing Data and Artificial Intelligence

Name: Roquia Salam

Student Id Number: 542552
Email address: rsalam@uni-muenster.de

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 1. Motivation, rationale, and short background:

Rainfall-induced landslides are recurrent and catastrophic disasters with a long-lasting impact on people’s
lives, livelihoods, critical infrastructure, and sustainable development. A dynamic and automated landslide
forecasting system is the key to reducing disaster risk. Although many scientists have contributed to this
area for a long time, there is still a serious lack of automated landslide forecasting system development. A
lack of systematic and continuous data collection (landslide inventories) is the major limitation among all
limitations. In the context of Bangladesh, collecting landslide inventories is very difficult because of three
main reasons e.g., manual collection of landslide inventories is very costly and time-consuming, extremely
hilly areas make it inaccessible to reach there during the heavy monsoon season when landslides occur, and
conflict is a prevalent issue in hilly areas of Bangladesh where there is a life risk. In these unique
circumstances, an automated landslide inventory method is necessary. So far, no study has been conducted
in Bangladesh that detects landslide inventories using an automatic method which is my major
environmental science concern.

For this reason, I am very much interested in developing a reliable automatic method to detect landslides
incorporating advanced geotechnical and geospatial techniques to address the limitation and generate an
automated forecasting system. As a study area, Kutupalong Rohingya Camp in Cox’s Bazar district which
is situated in the south-eastern part of the hilly region of Bangladesh will be selected. The automatic
landslide-detecting method would be trustworthy and useful to develop an automated forecasting system.
It would assist the decision-makers in taking decisions e.g., giving alerts on time, landslide hazard zonation,
landslide susceptibility mapping, and so on, accurately, and ultimately, it will benefit the local communities
by reducing their overall loss. The novel method can be scaled up in similar rainfall-induced landslide
disaster contexts.

2. Aims (or hypothesis) and research questions:

Based on the research gap, the aim of this proposed research is:

• To develop an automated method to detect landslide inventories, using satellite data and
artificial intelligence (AI)
• To find the best-performed AI algorithm to develop the automated method

The above-mentioned hypothesis is derived from the following research question:

• How to collect landslide inventories without field visits?

• What is the best-performed AI algorithm e.g., machine learning or deep learning to develop an
automated method to detect landslide inventories?

3. Literature review:

During the rainy season, a number of extreme landslides have occurred in mountainous areas resulting in
widespread fatality, losses, and damages (Mondini et al., 2023; Amatya et al., 2022). Due to climate change,
rainfall-induced landslides are expected to increase (Das and Wegmann, 2022) as climate change has
changed the hydrological cycle resulting in unusually heavy rainfall (Tabari et al., 2020). So, landslide

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detection is an urgent task to reduce the risks associated with this disaster (Casagli et al., 2023). Casagli et
al. (2023) have pointed out that remote sensing-based techniques are often utilized to detect landslides. For
instance, Chen et al. (2018) have generated an automated method for detecting landslides, in Shenzhen,
China, by analyzing the change of pre- and post-disaster using satellite images. They have used the change
detection method utilizing the Deep Convolution Neural Network (DCNN). The results indicate that their
method is reliable enough to detect landslides by producing fewer errors. Conversely, Amatya et al. (2022)
have developed a semi-automated method modification by using three change detection methods, based
and pre- and post-satellite images collected from two different sources, to detect landslides in Vietnam,
Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. They have utilized Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Normalize
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) for detecting change
and thus, to detect landslides. Some of the landslides were not detected by this model which is a limitation
of this method (Amatya et al., 2022). Yi et al. (2023) have utilized the interferometric synthetic aperture
radar (InSAR) method to develop a semi-automatic method with a view to detecting landslides in a part of
the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. They have claimed that this method can be applied in other areas for detecting
landslides. Meena et al. (2022) have applied four machine-learning models Random Forest (RF), Support
Vector Machines (SVM), Convolutional U-Net (CUN), and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) to develop an
automated landslide detecting method based on satellite images collected from two different satellites. They
have found CUN as the best model among the four to detect landslides in Nepal. The performances of the
developed methods vary based on spatial resolution, cloud cover, and so on. Very high or high-resolution
imageries are better to get superior results to detect landslides (Ghorbanzadeh et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2022).
According to Handwerger et al. (2021), in the presence of cloud cover in images, landslides cannot be
detected fully. There are a few more things to consider during developing methods to detect landslides.

4. Proposed methodology:
On 27 July 2021, a major landslide occurred in the Kutupalong Rohingya Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
which resulted in massive structural destruction as well as 5 Rohingya refuses lost their lives (Kamal et al.,
2022). So, for this study, both pre-and post-event satellite images will be collected for the Kutupalong
Rohingya Camp considering the landslide that occurred in 2021. Several authors in different parts of the
world have used remote sensing images collected by the commercial satellite like RapidEye, PlanetScope,
and so on for detecting landslide inventories (Piralilou et al., 2019, Das and Wegmann, 2022, Ghorbanzadeh
et al., 2022). However, managing commercial satellite images is very costly (Gazzea et al., 2021). In this
case, the performance of the sentinel 2 satellite images is good enough to take into account for this kind of
study as it is free of cost as well as the spatial resolution of sentinel images is 10 m, 20m, and 60m which
is considerable (Dai et al., 2020). So, for this study, Sentinel 2 images with 10m of spatial resolution will
be collected from Copernicus Open Access Hub (COAH).

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 Figure 1: The flowchart showing the methodology of the proposed work
As the slope is an important factor in identifying landslides (Piralilou et al., 2021), a 12.5 m Advanced Land
Observation Satellite (ALOS) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) will be used for generating a slope layer.
Figure 1 demonstrates the full methodology of the proposed work. Images collected from both COAH and
ALOS will be pre-processed and resampled to 10m of resolution. A full description of the image pre-
processing and resampling can be found in the work conducted by Chen et al. (2012). Then, image
segmentation from sentinel 2 and feature extraction followed by Amatya et al. (2022) from both sentinel 2
and DEM will be performed. Yao and Jin (2022) have explained the process of image segmentation. In
previous decades, pixel-based change detection had been used extensively, however, recently, it is revealed
that object-based change detection is outperformed (Chen et al., 2012). So, in the proposed study object-
based change detection will be implemented. In recent decades, researchers are adopting deep learning (Dl)
and ML for detecting landslide inventories, as these techniques have produced more precise and reliable
results than the conventional methods (Morales et al., 2022). So, in the next stage, the most popular ML
algorithm like RF, and DL algorithms convolutional neural network (CNN) will be performed to detect the
landslide inventories followed by Wang et al. (2021). Landslide inventory points collected from field
observation, by a research group of the Disaster Displacement Research Hub of the Institute for Risk and
Disaster Reduction at the University College London (IRDR UCL), will be used in the performance
evaluation process. The performance of the model will be evaluated by statistical metrics of accuracy, recall,
F1 score, precision (Meena et al., 2022); and the area under the curve” of the “Receiver Operating
Characteristic” curve (AUC ROC) (Talukdar et al., 2020). Then, the results of all the analyses will be
visualized by maps, tables, and graphs. Finally, the best ML model will be selected for detecting landslide
inventories by analyzing the results.

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 5. Diagrammatic work plan:
Table 1 demonstrates the full work plan of the proposed work.
Table 1: The table shows the work plan of the proposed work

2023 2024

24 Sep to 8 Oct

16 to 23 Nov
30 Aug to 14

24 to 31 Dec
15 to 23 Sep

16 to 29 Feb
24 to 31 Jan
8 to 15 Nov
6 to 21 Aug

24 to 8 Dec

9 to 23 Dec

1 to 14 Feb
9 to 23 Oct
24 Oct to 7

1 to 22 Jan

1 to 5 Mar
29 Aug

15 Feb
23 Jan
22 to

Nov
Sep
Literature review
Finalizing Objectives
Finalizing methods
Data collection
Data cleaning
Model
implementation part
I
Model
implementation part
II
Model evaluation
Results visualization
Writing results
Writing discussion
Writing Introduction,
Conclusion, and
Abstract
Compiling all
chapters and
reviewing the draft
Submit the draft of
the thesis paper
Getting comments
from the Supervisors
Improving the thesis
based on
Supervisor’s
comments
Submitting the final
thesis
Preparing for the
final thesis defense
Final thesis defense

6. Brief explanation of the work plan:

In the previous section (section 5), the full work plan has been shown in Table 1. The final semester
intending to conduct the thesis will be started on the 6th of September 2023. The final defense will be held
on between the 1st to 5th of March 2024. So, there will be exactly 6 months for completing the thesis. The
full work has been split into several small tasks (Table 1). One or two weeks have been assigned for each
task. Sometimes, the time of one task has been overlapped with the time of another task, as it is assumed
that within the assigned one or two weeks the respective task will not be completed. The work will be
started by searching for the appropriate kinds of literature followed by finalizing the objectives and

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methods. Simultaneously, the writing up of these sections will be completed. Then, the initiatives will be
taken to collect data from different sources. There is an important task after collecting data which is called
data cleaning. Before starting final analyses or model implementation, data cleaning e.g., removing outliers;
atmospheric correction; removing cloud cover, and so on will have been completed, so that the analyses
will not be affected. The main analyses will be started by commencing the model implementation part I
where segmentation and feature extraction will be conducted. Then, in the model implementation part II
the RF and CNN models will be implemented to perform object-based change detection to detect landslide
inventories. Next, the model’s evaluation performance will be conducted, followed by visualizing the
results. After completing the analyses, the main task is to complete the writing of results, followed by a
discussion, introduction, conclusion, and lastly abstract. Subsequently, all chapters will be combined and
reviewed to last time checking before submitting the first draft. One week is assigned for getting comments
and recommendations from the supervisors. However, it is anticipated that probably all supervisors will not
be able to give feedback within one week, because of their high workload and busy tight schedule. So, the
time for getting feedback from supervisors is overlapped with the time for improving the final thesis based
on the supervisor’s comments. After submitting the final thesis in mid of February 2024, time will be
allocated for taking preparation for the final defense that will be held on the first week of March 2024. This
is the tentative work plan. At any time, the work plan can be modified or updated due to necessity and
unexpected circumstances.

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 7. References:
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Mekong based on Planet imagery and a semi‐automatic mapping method. Geoscience Data Journal,
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Casagli, N., Intrieri, E., Tofani, V., Gigli, G., & Raspini, F. (2023). Landslide detection, monitoring and
prediction with remote-sensing techniques. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 4(1), 51-64,
https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00373-x.
Chen, G., Hay, G. J., Carvalho, L. M., & Wulder, M. A. (2012). Object-based change
detection. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 33(14), 4434-4457,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2011.648285.
Chen, Z., Zhang, Y., Ouyang, C., Zhang, F., & Ma, J. (2018). Automated landslides detection for mountain
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(2022). Landslide detection in the Himalayas using machine learning algorithms and U-Net.
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