Detection and monitoring of facilities exposed to subsidence phenomena via past and current generation SAR sensors

Abstract

The identification of facilities in areas affected by subsidence phenomena represents a fundamental activity in processes dealing with land management. For this kind of phenomena, the analyses may be hampered by the lack of official subsidence zoning maps because of the wide extension of the affected areas. This is mainly due to the costs necessary for measurements and surveys to be carried out via conventional in situ techniques which can turn out to be unaffordable for the authorities in charge of land management. In this regard, during the last decade the use of remote sensing data, such as medium resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images processed via differential interferometry algorithms (DInSAR), has proven its benefits for the detection and monitoring of facilities (i.e., buildings and infrastructures) in subsiding areas. Currently, the improved resolution and coverage of the ultimate generation SAR sensors seem very promising for consequence analyses of facilities, although displacement time series are still limited for long-term studies. In this paper, analyses of DInSAR data acquired via both medium (ERS-ENVISAT) and high (COSMO-SkyMed) resolution sensors are carried out over a densely urbanized flat area in southern Italy so as to show how the appropriate use of DInSAR data at different scales can valuably help in the detection and monitoring of damageable facilities.