Analyzing Multitemporal Datasets to Monitor Topographic Changes in Rio Cucco Italy

Rio Cucco is an Italian catchment located in Malborghetto of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is considered an area of interest regarding its hydrological and morphological properties. The area has historically been affected by natural hazards such as rockfall and landslides, mainly related to extreme rainfall events like the 2003 storm that affected the Fella river or the Vaia storm of October 2018. These events highlight the importance of understanding the morphological and topographic modification of the area also in relation to the realization of protection and hydraulic works. The changes in Rio Cucco were documented by comparing open-source historical data with ad-hoc UAV surveys focusing the analysis on 3D products like point clouds and the digital terrain models. The source of the recent data was an Aerial LiDAR- based survey conducted by our team in June 2024 while the historical data was taken from the FVG region’s geoportal and referred to 2017. After comparing the different datasets with traditional techniques like nearest neighbour Euclidean distance or DEM of Difference, changes were evident pointing to potential rockfalls between the year 2024 and 2017. A deep learning model was explored and in development for the semantic segmentation of the area.