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Challenges Of Modeling Rainfall Triggered Landslides In A Data-Sparse Region: A Case Study From The Western Ghats, India, C. L. Vishnu, T. Oommen, Snehamoy Chatterjee, K. S. Sajinkumar

Michigan Tech Publications

Accurate rainfall estimates are required to forecast the spatio-temporal distribution of rain-triggered landslides. In this study, a comparison between rain gauge and satellite rainfall data for assessing landslide distribution in a data-sparse region, the mountainous district of Idukki, along the Western Ghats of southwestern India, is carried out. Global Precipitation Mission Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM-Late (GPM IMERG-L) rainfall products were compared with rain gauge measurements, and it was found that the satellite rainfall observations were underpredicting the actual rainfall. A conditional merging algorithm was applied to develop a product that combines the accuracy of rain gauges and the spatial …