Application of DInSAR Technique to High Coherence Satellite Images for Strategic Infrastructure Monitoring

Abstract: In this paper the authors present and validate a procedure, which intends to combine the latest state of the art models in bridge monitoring with freely available satellite data. Through the Differential SAR interferometry (DinSAR) technique, a dataset of displacements for the Morandi bridge in Genoa (Italy), before its collapse, has been created, by using images downloaded by the Copernicus Open-Access Hub and the ASFVertex Hub. The data have been processed through the ESA SNAP software to identify the rate of displacements in the parts of the bridge where collapse occurred. Results demonstrate that the adopted procedure has great potentiality in the application field, as it represents a simple and inexpensive method to monitor large structures in a continuous way, by helping to better quantify risks and guide effective mitigation countermeasures. Moreover, the same procedure, once properly validated, could be effectively extended to the current and future performance estimation of civil infrastructures.