Seismically triggered landslides represent a major secondary hazard of earthquakes, often causing widespread damage over large areas. Rapid and reliable mapping of such phenomena is therefore essential, particularly in emergency contexts. While numerous studies have addressed landslide detection in vegetated regions using optical remote sensing, arid and desert environments remain relatively underexplored due to the limited spectral contrast between stable and failed slopes. In this study, we evaluate the potential of an automatic pixel-based method for the rapid detection of seismic landslides in arid settings, using high-resolution optical imagery. The analysis focuses on the Mw 5.5 earthquake that struck the Northern Red Sea Region of Eritrea on 26 December 2022. A detailed inventory of 1393 coseismic landslides was manually mapped from pre- and post-event PlanetScope multispectral images and used both for geomorphological and macroseismic analyses and as training data for a threshold-based classification approach. Landslide detection was based on changes in the Redness Soil Index (RSI) and its differential (ΔRSI), combined with a One-Class Asymmetric Robust Gaussian classifier. Results show a good capability to delineate landslide-affected areas, although commission errors remain significant. Despite these limitations, the proposed approach, still in need of a more trained implementation in the future, proves its potential effectiveness for rapid mapping purposes, owing to its simplicity and minimal computational requirements. These results open the possibility to implement a fully automatic methodology in the future, when more landslides will be mapped and a model trained on different and normalized datasets will be implemented. The results demonstrate that pixel-based optical methods, particularly those relying on red-band spectral changes, represent a valuable tool for the preliminary assessment of earthquake-induced landslides in arid environments and may support emergency response and first-order hazard evaluation.
Toward an Automatic Pixel-Based Detection of Earthquake-Triggered Landslides in Arid Environments Using Optical Imagery
Massa L.
Primo
;Livio F.Secondo
;Ferrario M. F.Ultimo
2026-01-01
Abstract
Seismically triggered landslides represent a major secondary hazard of earthquakes, often causing widespread damage over large areas. Rapid and reliable mapping of such phenomena is therefore essential, particularly in emergency contexts. While numerous studies have addressed landslide detection in vegetated regions using optical remote sensing, arid and desert environments remain relatively underexplored due to the limited spectral contrast between stable and failed slopes. In this study, we evaluate the potential of an automatic pixel-based method for the rapid detection of seismic landslides in arid settings, using high-resolution optical imagery. The analysis focuses on the Mw 5.5 earthquake that struck the Northern Red Sea Region of Eritrea on 26 December 2022. A detailed inventory of 1393 coseismic landslides was manually mapped from pre- and post-event PlanetScope multispectral images and used both for geomorphological and macroseismic analyses and as training data for a threshold-based classification approach. Landslide detection was based on changes in the Redness Soil Index (RSI) and its differential (ΔRSI), combined with a One-Class Asymmetric Robust Gaussian classifier. Results show a good capability to delineate landslide-affected areas, although commission errors remain significant. Despite these limitations, the proposed approach, still in need of a more trained implementation in the future, proves its potential effectiveness for rapid mapping purposes, owing to its simplicity and minimal computational requirements. These results open the possibility to implement a fully automatic methodology in the future, when more landslides will be mapped and a model trained on different and normalized datasets will be implemented. The results demonstrate that pixel-based optical methods, particularly those relying on red-band spectral changes, represent a valuable tool for the preliminary assessment of earthquake-induced landslides in arid environments and may support emergency response and first-order hazard evaluation.
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