An Updated Thesis Proposal

On

An Automated Method for Detecting Rainfall-induced Landslide Inventories

for Bangladesh based on Remote Sensing Data and Artificial Intelligence

Submitted by:

Name: Roquia Salam

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

Submitted to: Dr. Rui Li

Email address: rli4@albany.edu

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 1. Introduction:
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
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.

2. 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 (Ahmed et al., 2014;
Ahmed et al., 2018; Ahmed, 2021). In these unique circumstances, an automated method for detecting
landslide and developing inventories are necessary. So far, no study has been conducted in Bangladesh that
detects landslide and develop inventories using an automatic method which is my major environmental
science concern.

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For this reason, I am very interested in developing a reliable automatic method to detect landslides and
develop inventories 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 detect landslides
and develop an automated inventory. 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.

2.1 Aims and research questions:

Based on the research gap, the aims of this proposed research are:

• To develop a method to detect rainfall-induced landslides automatically, using Sentinel-2 data, and
two AI algorithms Random Forest (RF) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
• To develop automatic landslide inventories using the best-performed AI algorithm

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

• How to detect rainfall-induced landslides automatically by using Sentinel-2 data and AI

algorithms?
• How to develop landslide inventories automatically using the best-performed AI algorithm?

3. Proposed methodology:

Figure 1: The flowchart showing the methodology of the proposed work

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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).

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. Then, both the sentinel-2 and DEM
images will be divided into 10 equal-sized small images from the original image (both Sentinel-2 and DEM)
covering the whole study area. Out of 10, 8 (80% of the data) will be used for training and the rest 2 (20%
of the data) will be used for testing purposes. 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
landslides, 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 CNN will be performed to detect the landslide followed by Wang et al. (2021). CNN is a data-
driven algorithm, and so, it requires a large number of datasets to perform efficiently. Therefore, before
performing the CNN and RF algorithms, images for both training and testing will be subsets further, and,
then again, data augmentation techniques will be used for creating a sufficient amount of data. 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 AI model will be
selected for developing landslide inventories automatically.

4. Expected Outcome:

• An automated method will be developed for detecting landslides using two AI algorithms.
• Landslide inventories will be developed by using the best-performed AI algorithm.
• This will be practically adopted by the Department of Meteorology, Bangladesh for improving the
landslide forecasting system there.

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 5. Time schedule:
Table 1: The table shows the work plan of the proposed work

2023 2024

6 to 21 Aug

8 to 15 Nov

1 to 14 Feb
24 to 8 Dec

9 to 23 Dec

1 to 22 Jan
24 Sep to 8

24 Oct to 7
9 to 23 Oct

1 to 5 Mar
30 Aug to

24 to 31
15 to 23

16 to 23

24 to 31

16 to 29
29 Aug

15 Feb
14 Sep

23 Jan
22 to

Nov

Nov

Feb
Dec

Jan
Sep
Oct
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

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

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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 literature
and finalizing the objectives and 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 landslides. Next, the model’s evaluation performance will
be conducted, followed by visualizing the results. Then, the best-performed model will be used for
developing the landslide inventories. 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 supervisor feedback overlaps 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. The work plan can be modified or updated at any time due to necessity
and unexpected circumstances.

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