Abstract
In the planning stage of new infrastructure or when designing renovation of existing infrastructure, information about existing slope movements or settlements is essential to make informed design decisions. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques can be of value to identify these risks in an early stage of a project. InSAR can offer insight into the surface movements of an area from historic archives using satellite-based SAR data. Furthermore, InSAR observations can help identify zones with displacements larger than the average of an area, and be used to plan future soil investigation more effectively. Thanks to their high temporal and spatial resolution, InSAR observations can also complement in situ conventional monitoring during the construction and operational stage. Despite these possibilities, the use of InSAR is not yet standard practice in geotechnical projects and no formal guidelines are currently available to inform engineers, planners and infrastructure stakeholder on the use of InSAR-based monitoring within geotechnical design codes. Here we provide an operational framework for the practical integration of InSAR monitoring into current geotechnical design codes, such as Eurocode-7, for all project stages. The proposed framework is then demonstrated for the planning stage of a highway renovation project, focusing on an area potentially subjected to landslides where no conventional monitoring data was available at this stage. We concluded that the proposed framework is a practical and operational tool that can be used by planners and engineers in the whole lifecycle of an infrastructure project.
Highlights
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a remote sensing technique that can monitor displacements of large areas of the earth surface with a high temporal and spatial resolution
By combining this information with topographical and archived hydrogeological data, we identified the driving mechanisms determine the amount of temporal measurements of pore water pressure loggers and inclinometers
While the use of InSAR within the civil engineering field it is often still perceived as limited to the academic discussion, in this contribution we argue that the threshold for applying the technique in operational practice has become much lower
Summary
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a remote sensing technique that can monitor displacements of large areas of the earth surface with a high temporal and spatial resolution. The potential of InSAR was hindered by the lack of systematic and generally accepted embedment into established geotechnical procedures These procedures are detailed in geotechnical design codes such as the Eurocode-7 [30] in Europe, the SIA267 Geotechnik code in Switzerland [66] and the Geotechnical Site Characterization Publication No FHWA NHI-16–072 of the Department of Transportation in the US [75]. To fill this gap, we developed an operational framework to combine InSAR with current geotechnical design codes, such as the Eurocode-7, in all stages of a project.
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