A temporary soil dump settlement and landslide risk analysis using the improved small baseline subset-InSAR and continuous medium model

Abstract

Abandoned soil disposal in China has become increasingly challenging, which may pose significant safety hazards such as soil settlement and landslides. Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is effective in surface deformation monitoring and Small Baseline Subset-InSAR (SBAS-InSAR) can obtain sufficient coherent point density from the bare soil surface. This study investigated Chishi soil dump in the Shenzhen-Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone (SSSCZ), and a total of 91 Sentinel-1 images from 2019 to 2022 was processed. Accordingly, an improved SBAS-InSAR method was utilized to analyze the soil dump’s time-series deformation, and multi-source remote sensing data were used for auxiliary interpretation. Our results indicate that precipitation, high temperature, and construction vibrations may cause instability of the soil dump. Therefore, a depth-integrated continuous medium model was introduced to analyze the potential landslide risk of the soil dump, which demonstrate that a landslide will likely occur, harm personnel, and damage the buildings surrounding the Chishi soil dump when it was saturated (λ ≥ 0.50). This research can provide a vital case reference for the analysis, interpretation, disaster prevention, and control evaluation of similar soil dumps.