Application of Satellite Remote Sensing in Natural Hazard Management: The Mount Mangart Landslide case Study

On 17 November 2000 a major landslide occurred on the slopes of Mount Mangart in the upper Posocje region, Slovenia, as a direct consequence of extreme rainfall and assortment of several inconvenient circumstances. A research group was established immediately after the event to find possible causes of the landslide and monitor its consequences. As a part of these attempts also remote sensing and integration of remotely sensed data to GIS was used. In the paper usefulness of satellite images as one of the most convenient data source in natural hazard observation is demonstrated. Satellite images were acquired within the “Space and Major Disaster” Charter, started just a few weeks before the event by the European Space Agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales and the Canadian Space Agency. Advanced image processing was performed carefully to analyze various aspects of the event. Before and after radar images were used to detect soil moisture and to observe the changes in water runoff. Optical images together with DEM were used for GIS analysis of areas affected by the slide. Land use maps, generated from processed imagery, proved to be highly useful for damage estimation.