Enhancing Landslide Preparedness: Leveraging EGMS Products and SBAS-InSAR for Pre-Event Ground Deformation Monitoring along the E6 Highway near Stenungsund in Southern Sweden

Abstract

Landslides cause significant socioeconomic impacts on people and national infrastructures like railways and roads and are considered one of the common geohazards that demand more attention. In Sweden, many areas are prone to landslides due to the presence of underlying quick-clay sediments, which may lead to minor to large slides. Ground deformation monitoring in such hazardous areas is important for a better understanding of the landslide processes and mitigation of hazards. Over the last decade, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time-series techniques, such as Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) and the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS), have become a crucial tool for ground surface deformation analysis. SBAS and PSI use SAR data to retrieve the time-series cumulative phase of the Persistent Scatters (PS). The main objective of this study was to demonstrate the advantage of using advanced InSAR time series analysis for a better understanding of surface deformation before a landslide event. We focused on the recent landslide on the E6 Sweden-Norway highway near Stenungsund in Southern Sweden, which occurred on 23 September 2023. Sentinel-1 SAR data was collected between 2018 and September 2023, with ascending flight direction to measure the pre-event deformation in the landslide zone. We used Alaska Facility (ASF) on-demand product processes based on Hybrid Pluggable Processing Pipeline (Hyp3) to search, process, and download time series Sentinel-1 data. We also used Miami INsar Time-series software in PYthon (Mintpy) to perform cloud-based SBAS processing using unwrapped interferograms stack derived from Sentinel-1 time series data. In addition, we employed Basic PSI products (ground motion in the Line-of-Sight (LOS) direction) provided by the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS). The initial SBAS results and EGMS Basic products for the same ascending orbit showed continuous deformation on the highway segment in the landslide zone over the last EGMS update period, 2018 to 2022 for the PSI results and 2018 to 2023  for the SBAS results. The first five-year period of the EGMS Basic and Ortho products, i.e., 2015-2021, was also checked and showed the same results over the longer period between 2015 and 2021. Both sets of PSI and SBAS results agree on the annual cm-level (10-15 mm/year) subsidence rate of the highway before the landslide, with SBAS analysis yielding more measurement points, especially in the vegetated and unbuilt areas. The initial results showed that the SBAS technique could provide more information within the hazardous zone; nevertheless, due to Sentinel-1 C-band data, the quality of the results can be degraded by coherence variations in the vegetated areas.  The comparison of preliminary results of InSAR data processing and available EGMS products provides insights into ground movements, facilitating a comprehensive understanding of evolving conditions before the landslide. Nevertheless, the results emphasize the importance of incorporating advanced time series InSAR techniques for continuously monitoring infrastructures such as railroads and highways to support sustainable development and natural hazard assessments.