Analysis of Damage to Buildings in Urban Centers on Unstable Slopes via TerraSAR-X PSI Data: The Case Study of El Papiol Town (Spain)

Abstract

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) data, deriving from the processing of SAR images acquired by highresolution sensors such as TerraSAR-X, provide accurate measurements of displacements affecting structures (e.g., buildings) and linear infrastructure networks (e.g., roads, bridges, embankments, and pipelines). Such widespread displacements, when available on buildings on unstable slopes, offer new perspectives for their integration in procedures pursuing the analysis and the prediction of the physical vulnerability of exposed buildings. In this letter, both deterministic and probabilistic cause (differential settlements)-effects (damage) relationships are generated by using PSI-derived building settlements and the results of building damage surveys. The procedure is applied to El Papiol town (Spain), whose urban area has been suffering diffuse damage of different severity to buildings and roads due to extremely slowmoving landslide phenomena.

Combining Sentinel-1 Interferometry and Ground-Based Geomatics Techniques for Monitoring Buildings Affected by Mass Movements

“…For these reasons, despite SBAS technique is time-consuming from the computational viewpoint and for the operator intervention, it should be preferred to PS-InSAR based techniques [14] which allow to estimate deformations affecting limited areas [53]. PS techniques can be effectively used for analyzing highly urbanized unstable slopes, as shown in previous studies [21][22][23][24].…”

“…These techniques have been developed during the last two decades referring to two main approaches, persistent scatterer (PS, [12][13][14]) and small baseline subset (SBAS, [15,16]), and can be used to measure surface displacements due to natural processes and human activities [17,18], removing the effects of atmosphere, topography, and signal noise. They have been used to monitor mass movements [11,19] and anthropogenic structures and infrastructures (e.g., buildings, dams, roads, bridges, and pipelines) affected by such phenomena [10,20,21].…”

Implementation of Non-Linear Non-Parametric Persistent Scatterer Interferometry and Its Robustness for Displacement Monitoring

“…Among the various interferometric stacking techniques persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) [ 2 ] has become one of the most common approaches that enable one to measure millimetric order surface displacements. A great deal of research has been performed using these approaches to detect surface displacements of infrastructures such as buildings, railways, highways, paved roads, dams, and other artificial objects [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. There are also many studies that extended the PSI technique to improve the accuracy of the displacement estimation and to solve certain limitations [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”

Full integration of geomorphological, geotechnical, A-DInSAR and damage data for detailed geometric-kinematic features of a slow-moving landslide in urban area

“…Furthermore, both topographic and geotechnical monitoring equipment is not easy to be installed when the landslide-affected area is densely built up (Gullà et al 2017). Conversely, it is exactly the presence of the exposed elements that identifies the unstable slopes as at risk areas (Borrelli and Gullà 2017;Fell et al 2008;Corominas et al 2014;Cigna et al 2014;Ferlisi et al 2019;Peduto et al 2019b;Winter et al 2016). Therein, more sophisticated numerical analysis can be developed-if soil mechanical properties and the groundwater regimen are adequately defined-for appropriate hazard and vulnerability assessment, which is necessary to plan and design reliable control works and risk mitigation strategies.…”