Abstract
Underground mining activities usually induce large surface displacements thus causing serious safety hazards and potential ecological damage. The capability of conventional Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to monitor tectonic movements, volcanic eruptions and city subsidence has been fully demonstrated, but its application to mining subsidence is limited because of the failure caused by localized surface displacements with strong spatial gradients. In this paper, a new method is presented to utilize SAR pixel Offset Tracking (OT) with a single pair of SAR images to resolve three-dimensional (3D) large surface displacements caused by underground coal mining. Coal mining subsidence theory is utilised to analytically separate the vertical and horizontal components. This method is applied to the Daliuta coal mining area in Shaanxi Province, China, where a dense GPS network is available. Results show the RMS differences of OT derived displacements against GPS in both horizontal and vertical directions are in the sub-centimeter level. In addition, a prediction of mining-induced ground movements is performed with the Support Vector Regression algorithm and RMS differences of 12.4, 13.1 and 14.4 cm are observed compared to GPS, in the vertical, easting and northing directions respectively. The framework demonstrated in this paper is not only able to derive the evolution of the 3D large surface displacements with multi-temporal SAR images in a single-geometry, but also has a potential for short-term predication, which can provide early warnings and promote strategic decision-making for engineering management in the process of coal mining.
Highlights
Coal provides important energy support for the development of national economy and it is one of the non-renewable energy sources on the Earth
That assumption is not applicable for coal mining subsidence, as characteristic features of large deformation caused by coal mining can exhibit spatial discontinuity and temporal non-linearity; Thirdly, the model parameters, including the tangent of the major influential angle and the coefficient of horizontal movements, were considered to be constants in the modelling process, but these parameters should not be fixed when taking into account the nature of the actual movements
Coal mining often leads to large surface displacements with high spatial gradients, which is beyond the detection ability of traditional Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)
Summary
That assumption is not applicable for coal mining subsidence, as characteristic features of large deformation caused by coal mining can exhibit spatial discontinuity and temporal non-linearity; Thirdly, the model parameters, including the tangent of the major influential angle and the coefficient of horizontal movements, were considered to be constants in the modelling process, but these parameters should not be fixed when taking into account the nature of the actual movements. A novel method is presented in this paper to obtain 3D large surface displacements and their evolution in time for coal mining, using multiple SAR images from a single imaging geometry. We attempt to investigate the feasibility to predict mining-induced ground movements using the 3D surface displacements derived from SAR images with a single imaging geometry
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