RER2023: the landslide inventory dataset of the May 2023 Emilia-Romagna event

Abstract. Landslide inventories are crucial for evaluating susceptibility, hazards, and risks, and for devising resilience strategies in mountainous regions. This importance is amplified in the context of climate change, as existing inventories might not adequately reflect changing stability conditions. In May 2023, the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy was hit by two major rainfall events, leading to widespread flooding and the triggering of thousands of landslides. Predominantly, these were shallow debris slides and debris flows, occurring on slopes previously deemed stable based on historical data with no prior landslides recorded. Our team supported the Civil Protection Agency through field surveys and mapping efforts to pinpoint and record these landslides, prioritizing areas critical to immediate public safety and focusing on thorough mapping for future recovery planning. The outcome is a detailed map of all landslides induced by these events, manually identified using high-resolution aerial photography (0.2 m pixel resolution, RGB+NIR four bands) and categorized with the help of a 3D viewer. This comprehensive landslide inventory, comprising 80997 polygons, has been made openly accessible to the scientific community.