A Robust Satellite Technique for monitoring landslides impact on electrical infrastructures

Natural disasters, in recent years, are increasinglyaffecting critical infrastructures and, particularly, electric and gas supply pipelineswhich play a vital role in modern society. In order to enable effectivedisaster response, ensure the safety of affected populations, and facilitatethe recovery and rebuilding process following sudden-onset disasters, it is crucialto have accurate and timely information on infrastructure damage. This studyimplements an advanced multi-temporal technique to detect even small landslideaffecting electrical poles.  Land-coverinformation obtained by the Multispectral Instrument (MSI) sensor aboard theCopernicus Sentinel-2 platforms are used to timely (within days/weeks) identifysuch events. To this end, long-term satellite data are processed in the GoogleEarth Engine (GEE) environment to preliminarily characterize unperturbed soilconditions before to implement the RST (Robust Satellite Techniques) foranomalous soil conditions identification. Our findings reveal that severalelectrical poles had been affected by landslides in Sicily from 2016-2023. Theresults of this study also confirmed the efficiency of an RST-likeapproach  for landslide detection.