A Case Study on Offshore Platform Deformation Monitoring by using InSAR

Amir Sharifuddin Ab Latip,Anuphao Aobpaet,Abd Nasir Matori,M Raza Ul Mustafa,I Bin Othman,M Latheef,N Zulaikha Bt Yusof,D Bayu Endrayana

doi:10.1051/matecconf/201820304002

Abstract

The Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is well established technique for onshore applications such as landslide, mining, volcano, urban and dam deformation monitoring. However, the ability of the InSAR technique for the offshore application particularly on the oil platform deformation monitoring is still a pending question. Therefore, a study needs to be conducted in order to assess the feasibility of the InSAR technique for monitoring the deformation of offshore platform. In this study, an advanced InSAR technique called Stanford Method of Persistent Scatterer (StaMPS) was utilized to process a stack of TerraSAR-X data. A mask has been developed as an additional module in the StaMPS to remove the noise on the ocean and relax the assigned condition imposed on the processing parameters. The results show that the number of persistent scatterer (PS) points on the offshore platform increased from 15 to 22 points and a smoother pattern of the velocity estimation could be seen when masking was applied to identify the deformation. Furthermore, some limitations and possible solutions of the PSI technique on the offshore platform application are summarized in this paper to guide future users on this application.

Highlights

Offshore platforms have become important assets for oil and gas industries as the demand for energy from fossil fuel keeps on increasing
This study has focused on extracting the surface deformation over a fixed offshore platform by generating a deformation velocity map and displacement time series from the Stanford Method of Persistent Scatterer (StaMPS) technique
This study has developed a mask to exclude the de-correlated area caused by the ocean and left only the monitored offshore platform area to be involved in the processing

Summary

Introduction

Offshore platforms have become important assets for oil and gas industries as the demand for energy from fossil fuel keeps on increasing. Ground-based techniques, such as precise levelling, total stations, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) are widely applied in geomatics fields for oil and gas structures deformation monitoring [2 - 4] while accelerometers, piezometers, inclinometers, tiltmeters, extensometers and fiber-optics are mainly applied in geotechnical fields [5 - 7]. The ground-based techniques can provide deformation information with high accuracy and reliability, they only provide deformation information at specific observation points with a large investment in logistics cost, human resources, special equipment, and time consumption [8]. Through the development of multi-temporal InSAR techniques, it has a high sensitivity to detect even a small deformation of structures over a long time span with millimeter accuracy [9]. A large number of observations used and long-term surface deformation monitoring derived from InSAR is a very helpful tool to support the development of reliable deformation models [11 -12]

Methods

Results

Conclusion