Loess landslides detection via a partially supervised learning and improved Mask-RCNN with multi-source remote sensing data

Loess landslides pose a severe threat of destruction, and detecting them is crucial for minimizing their impact on society. They typically consist of wind-deposited clay and silt, which makes them challenging to detect using conventional methods. Techniques like visual interpretation and field surveys are the most useful, yet these methods can be laborious, expensive, and require a certain level of prior knowledge. Furthermore, remote sensing approaches face the challenge of distinguishing between natural erosion and landslides. Recently, deep learning for landslide detection has the potential to speed up and improve detection accuracy. Nonetheless, deep learning models require large amounts of labeled data and the development of robust algorithms capable of extracting meaningful features from remote sensing data. In this article, a novel approach is introduced to improve the Mask Regional Convolutional Neural Network (Mask-RCNN) algorithm for accurately detecting landslides when the number of available segmentation mask samples is limited. Specifically, A novel loess landslides dataset is established using high-resolution remote sensing images in Gansu Province. In the context of partially supervised learning, a neural network branch containing a weight transfer function is developed to capture mask information from bounding boxes. Additionally, a mask-scoring network block is used to learn the quality of predicted instance masks. Our modified algorithm achieves an average precision improvement of 20.7% compared to the original Mask R-CNN algorithm in small landslide detection. The mask IoU threshold value of 0.5 is used to estimate the average accuracy higher than 0.75. The average precision of the segmentation mask is improved by 16.7% in test set. By proposing a solution that can achieve accurate landslide detection while using limited labeled samples, this study makes a valuable contribution to the application of deep learning in the domains of remote sensing and landslide detection.