SARAI - Towards a smart exploitation of land displacement data for the prevention and mitigation of geological-geotechnical risks

The SARAI project aims to improve the exploitation capabilities of radar-based remote sensing techniques to measure and monitor earth deformation: differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR) and persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI). The importance of DInSAR and PSI has grown considerably in the last decade. A key factor is the availability of various missions that include Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors. The consolidation of such growth is represented by the creation of Ground Motion Service (GMS). This service began on a regional scale basis. In 2016, a European initiative proposed to implement a DInSAR-based European Earth Movement Service (EGMS) to provide consistent data on a continental scale. This service is currently under development. An important part of this project is related to the exploitation of the next results of the EGMS. The main products of DInSAR and PSI are deformation rate (velocity) and time series. The velocity map shows the linear deformation during the entire observed period. It is calculated assuming a constant rate or speed throughout the period. This product is quite robust. Deformation time series describe the deformation time history of the measurement points. This product provides much more detailed information than the previous one: it is useful to follow deformation phenomena over time and thus understand their kinematics and their causes.