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Varia 610 - Mapping subsidence in an urban area with Differential InSAR and comparing with traditional methods – test area Gothenburg

2010-06-10

 

The main idea of this project is to investigate whether interferometry technique – more
specifically Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) - can be applied to urban settings
where human activities such as deep excavations due to building works or mining
causes land subsidence, for geotechnical conditions as those in Sweden, and to compare
the result with results from traditional methods for settlement measurement.

Gothenburg was chosen as the testing ground as measurements of ongoing settlements
in the central parts of Gothenburg has been carried out for a long time and vertical as
well as horizontal movements has been measured at the start (before, during and after)
construction of the Göta Tunnel.

Initially, only the DInSAR technique would be tested and used for comparison. However,
early on it became evident that due to the overwhelming presence of forests and
urban green areas, simple DInSAR would not be able to provide adequate results for
ground movement in the vicinity of Gothenburg. Therefore, the focus of the analysis
was switched from DInSAR to PSInSAR.

The result from this PSInSAR analysis shows that the number of measuring points
within the area of interest is more than the double and the points are mainly located in
areas where ongoing settlements have been measured by the traditional leveling. But
still, many of the quarters with ongoing settlements were not registered by the satellite
analyses. In addition, the size of the ongoing subsidence registered by the PSInSAR
analysis is now generally larger than the ongoing settlements measured by leveling.

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