Roles of Remote Sensing Technology in Landslide Risk Management of Hong Kong

Abstract

Natural terrain covers over 60% of the land area of Hong Kong. With the close proximity of developments to hillsides and high annual rainfall, Hong Kong is under a constant threat from natural terrain landslides. Over the past years, the Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO) of the Civil Engineering and Development Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government has applied state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques, for example, laser scanning, photogrammetry and interferometric synthetic aperture radar, in landslide risk management. These include landslide hazard identification and monitoring, post-landslide responses and residual risk management, design of landslide prevention and mitigation measures etc. This paper discusses the advantages of remote sensing technology and their applications to enhance the slope safety of Hong Kong. Pilot studies applying machine learning on identification of geological features from aerial imageries and further studies being/to be conducted are also covered.