Updated Understanding of landslides’ kinematics along Thompson River Valley

ABSTRACT: Landslide events are one of most common phenomena which can cause catastrophic consequences and damages for the area that hosts these events. Monitoring both natural and man-made slopes is one of the most effective and common methods to mitigate the negative effect of the possible slope failure. Monitoring slopes can help engineers to prevent those events or to plan for any repair schedule for infrastructures. Early warning of landslide events also could be alert risk management teams to decrease damages and avoid possible fatalities. Remote sensing is one of the most effective methods for monitoring, specially in remote areas and can be employed to monitor slope’s activity in different infrastructures such as open mines, dams, roads, and railways to have accurate estimation of ground movement. InSAR technology, as a remote sensing method can be used to estimate ground movement with high accuracy (mm/year) to monitor and have early warning of unordinary movements. In this research, InSAR data helps to update understanding of landslides’ movement along the Thompson River valley, BC, Canada. This corridor hosts several relatively active landslides. The real movement of landslides along the valley is estimated using two different orbits of Sentinel-1 Satellite in this research, and the result is verified using the existed GPS data for Ripley landslide which is the fastest landslide along the valley. Then the kinematics of landslides is updated using the results of defined method as well as previous results at the same area.