Using high resolution SAR data to monitor deformations at a very detailed scale

Giulia Tessari (a), Emma Velterop (b), Paolo Pasquali (c) & Mario Floris (a)
(a) Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Gradenigo, 6, 35131, Padova, Italia. (b) Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. (c) Sarmap S.A., Cascin di Barico, 10, 6989, Purasca, Switzerland.

The detection and monitoring of deformation phenomena caused by natural and human-induced processes are increasingly performed through the analyses of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data. The use of Differential Interferometric SAR (DInSAR) techniques provides information about the temporal evolution of different events, such as earthquakes, volcano eruptions, subsidence and landslides. The recent availability of high resolution data, from COSMO-SkyMed and TerraSAR-X missions, led to important advances on the use of DInSAR techniques to monitor different types of phenomena, working on very detailed scales. The present work is aimed to test the response of the processing of COSMO-SkyMed images, with different DInSAR techniques, to analyse the fields of displacements induced by a sinkhole affecting the Jordanian coast of the Dead Sea and a recent building in Astana, Kazakhstan.

DInSAR, COSMO-SkyMed, sinkhole, building