A Joint Experiment on the L-SAR All-weather Remote Sensing System for Landslide Monitoring in Hong Kong Region

Principal Investigator:
Lin, Hui

Co-investigator(s):
Guo, Huadong
Shao, Yun
Chen, Yongqin
Wang, Changling

Summary:
After two decades of rapid economic growth, the government and people of Hong Kong have been increasingly paying closer attention to environmental protection and restoration, which are vital steps in improving the quality of living since early '90s.

Hong Kong has very limited natural resources by itself and a range of environmental constraints and natural hazards have been upsetting the territory for many years. Slope instability and landslides are among the major issues that urgently need to be studied by scientists using advanced geoinformation technologies.

Remote sensing and GIS have numerous advantages over the traditional techniques for landslide monitoring and modeling. For the Hong Kong region, where cloudy and rainy weather is very common throughout the year, microwave sensors being active remote sensors, have the advantage of detecting the ground. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active sensor that transmits electromagnetic waves in the microwave portion of the spectrum and receives the backscatter from targets. The SAR sensor can observe the Earth from sky and space without being affected by weather and illumination conditions, and it can thus guarantee data acquisition.

In this study, we plan to take the airborne radar system L-SAR EOS as an operational platform flying over Hong Kong and conduct exemplary applications as a part of the research programmes of the Joint Laboratory for GeoInformation Science set up by researchers in CAS and CUHK. The research team will test the SAR system developed in China. Landslide monitoring as a major application, will be carried out to demonstrate the capabilities and advantages of the SAR system.

This project will be the first of its kind of aerial SAR experiment in Hong Kong. A new method is expected for updating Hong Kong's GIS-based management system with digital (remote sensing) data in all weathers.