NRSC wins international award for creating comprehensive landslide inventory database

Bengaluru: The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), under the Department of Space, has bagged the prestigious Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) for the year 2023.

ESRI is a global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping. The institute presents the SAG award annually to recognise exceptional work in the field of GIS technology.

During the plenary session of the ESRI User Conference held earlier this week in California in the US, ESRI President and founder Jack Dangermond announced the recipients of this year's SAG awards.

"NRSC emerged as the awardee from India, setting a new precedent within the GIS community for its outstanding application of GIS technology in landslide inventory," an official statement said.

Hyderabad-based NRSC was recognised for its feat of creating a comprehensive geospatial database consisting of approximately 80,000 landslides in India spanning from 1998 to 2022, utilising satellite data.

This landslide inventory database was augmented with vital information such as lithology, geological structure, soil composition, slope analysis and land use patterns.

Leveraging advanced machine learning techniques, NRSC developed landslide susceptibility maps for critical tourist corridors in Himachal Pradesh and pilgrimage road corridors in Uttarakhand, both located in the Indian Himalayan region.

Given the severe impact of landslides, which exhibit a life cycle of 3-4 years, monitoring their kinetic behaviour, particularly in the tertiary stage, becomes crucial for predicting the time of failure, the statement noted.

The geospatial landslide inventory database of India, covering the Himalayas and Western Ghats regions, has served as a fundamental resource for landslide mitigation studies, it was stated.

Additionally, this comprehensive database has provided crucial insights into the factors influencing landslides in India.

The landslide susceptibility maps are potentially instrumental for decision-makers in planning developmental activities in hilly regions, ensuring the safety and welfare of local communities.

NRSC's novel work in estimating landslide kinematics using Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSAR) technology has further enhanced its capabilities in predicting vulnerable slope failures in hilly terrains, the statement said.

By employing PSInSAR, NRSC has contributed to the advancement of landslide research and improved disaster preparedness measures.