Displacement Monitoring by Terrestrial SAR Interferometry for Geotechnical Purposes

Abstract

The geotechnical community is looking with increasing interest at emerging technologies. Innovative techniques able to solve problems that have been unsolved for decades are now available. However, geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists      before applying them, and especially on the reliability of collected data. Remote sensing techniques are one      of geotechnical monitoring, since they are changing the philosophy from “contact” to “non-contact” monitoring. In other words, by remote sensing techniques, some geotechnical parameters are collected by equipment located away from the investigated area. However, ground-based remote sensing instruments such as manual or robotic total stations and GPS (Global   ˘ˇ ˆ  as fully “non-contact” instruments since they need targets or sensors installed on the monitored ground or structure. Among the ground-based techniques, only Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) and the Terrestrial SAR Interferometry (TInSAR) can be considered completely “non-contact” remote sensing techniques. ˙ ˝ ˇ˝ ˙˛ ˘˚˜!  developed at the end of the 1990s, and    ˝  back to 4-5 years ago. Seven years ex-perience with TInSAR has allowed me   !     ˝   #  -ful applications for complex geotechni-cal problems. In what follows, the basic principles of this technique, together with a de-tailed description of its performance, main advantages and limitations and lessons learned from real cases will be discussed.