A CNN–Transformer hybrid network for efficient cross-region landslide detection by transfer learning
摘要
Clustered landslides triggered by extreme rainfall and major earthquakes are increasingly frequent, necessitating rapid, accurate landslide detection (LSD) tools for post-disaster response. However, traditional LSD methods encounter challenges, including limited samples in few-shot scenarios and the underexplored use of Transformer-based models. This study presents LSDFormer, a compact CNN–Transformer hybrid for cross-region LSD, and develops a globally distributed landslide dataset (GDLD) for pre-training and transfer learning (TL). LSDFormer adopts a U-shaped encoder–decoder with lightweight blocks for efficient local and global feature capture (20.0 G FLOPs, 37.7 M parameters). It integrates two novel blocks: Efficient-CT, which combines a lightweight MobileNetV3 block (MB3) and efficient multi-head self-attention (EMSA) to jointly capture local details and global dependencies, and Enhanced-CT, which leverages the spatial specificity of involution with multi-level involution-based spatial attention (MISA) to further enhance feature representation. To evaluate the cross-regional generalization, we constructed two target domain datasets: RLZX (rainfall-induced landslides in Zixing, China) and ELNT (earthquake-induced landslides in the Noto Peninsula, Japan). Experiments conducted on the RLZX and ELNT datasets demonstrate that LSDFormer surpasses existing state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, our TL framework enables the model to achieve high-quality results with only 10% or even less of target domain data. Our model and framework excel in rapidly detecting rainfall-induced and earthquake-induced landslides across large areas, reducing labeling needs and completing LSD tasks for approximately 1,000 km2 in minutes to meet post-disaster emergency response demands, demonstrating substantial practical value. It also establishes a promising paradigm for future LSD research.