InSAR based deformation mapping of earthquake using Sentinel 1A imagery

Abstract

Development of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) based satellites provide remedies to major geohazards under critical situations around the world. Sentinel 1A mission with the revisit period of 12 days helps to serve the objective in an effective manner. With the availability of interferometric wide (IW) Swath mode, Sentinel 1A mission is capable of monitoring the surface deformation using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques. On 12 November 2017, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 occurred in the Iran/Iraq border lead to the enormous disaster reaching over 500 victims. The study focuses on measuring the deformation caused due to earthquakes by using differential SAR interferometry (DInSAR). VV polarization of Sentinel Data and SRTM DEM are used as an input to GMTSAR for the development of interferogram. Based on the results obtained, it is found that a maximum of 85.1 cm deformation occurred and nearly 1500 km2 of the area is severely affected.