The recent release of European Ground Motion Service (EGMS) products implemented under the responsibility of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) guarantees free and accessible Europe-wide ...ground motion data for ground deformation analysis at the local and regional scales. The need for value-adding services and tools for optimal dissemination of radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission urges the scientific community to find efficient solutions. A desktop R-based application with a user-friendly interface capable of automatically downloading and transforming EGMS products delivered as large .csv tiles, equivalent to a radar burst into geospatial databases, is presented here. EGMStream is a self-contained desktop app that enables users to systematically store, customize, and convert ground movement data into geospatial databases, burst per burst or for an area of interest directly selectable on the app interface.
The results of the continuous monitoring of ground deformation throughout the Tuscany region using radar images acquired by the Sentinel-1 satellite constellation of the European Space Agency (ESA) ...are presented here. This new monitoring approach, based on systematic imagery processing and analysis of deformation time series, is discussed at regional (for the entire Tuscany) and at local scale in the context of a case study of the Carpineta landslide, which is a large, active earth slide in the Northern Apennines (Pistoia province). The landslide registered an acceleration during the winter and spring of 2018 as a direct consequence of rainfall and snow melt. The increase in the deformation rate of the landslide, which led to the damage of several buildings, was promptly detected and monitored due to the enhanced temporal repetitiveness offered by the Sentinel-1 constellation. The results demonstrate that advances in satellite sensors, increases in computing capacity and the refinement of processing approaches and data screening tools can contribute to the development of new paradigms in satellite-based monitoring systems. Sentinel-1 data, which are systematically acquired with short revisiting times and then promptly processed, can now be used as a tool for the systematic tracking of ground deformation at the regional scale and for the continuous monitoring of slow and very slow landslides.
We present the continuous monitoring of ground deformation at regional scale using ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-1constellation of satellites. We discuss this operational monitoring service ...through the case study of the Tuscany Region (Central Italy), selected due to its peculiar geological setting prone to ground instability phenomena. We set up a systematic processing chain of Sentinel-1 acquisitions to create continuously updated ground deformation data to mark the transition from static satellite analysis, based on the analysis of archive images, to dynamic monitoring of ground displacement. Displacement time series, systematically updated with the most recent available Sentinel-1 acquisition, are analysed to identify anomalous points (i.e., points where a change in the dynamic of motion is occurring). The presence of a cluster of persistent anomalies affecting elements at risk determines a significant level of risk, with the necessity of further analysis. Here, we show that the Sentinel-1 constellation can be used for continuous and systematic tracking of ground deformation phenomena at the regional scale. Our results demonstrate how satellite data, acquired with short revisiting times and promptly processed, can contribute to the detection of changes in ground deformation patterns and can act as a key information layer for risk mitigation.
The 6-days repeatability of Sentinel-1 constellation allows building up an interferometric stack with unprecedented velocity. Easily updatable hot-spot analyses, frequently repeated following the ...update of Sentinel-1 images, represent very useful tools for MTInSAR (Multi-Temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) data analysis. Mountain regions are a challenging environment for interferometric analyses because of their climatic, morphological and land cover characteristics. In this context, MTInSAR data can retrieve reliable information over wide areas, with high cost-benefits ratio and where the installation of ground-based devices is not feasible. Considering the well-known limitations of interferometric techniques (such as fast motions or temporal and spatial decorrelation), hot-spot analyses are a viable solution for semi-automatic ground movements extraction over mountain regions. In this work, we present an example of a hot-spot analysis applied to a large stack of MTInSAR products generated by means of SqueeSAR technique over an alpine region (Valle d'Aosta, north-western Italy). The obtained outputs allow detecting 277 moving areas connected to landslides and mass wasting processes in general. These products are intended to be implemented in the landslide risk management chain of the region, focusing on landslide state of activity definition and landslide mapping.
Landslides recurrently impact the Italian territory, producing huge economic losses and casualties. Because of this, there is a large demand for monitoring tools to support landslide management ...strategies. Among the variety of remote sensing techniques, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has become one of the most widely applied for landslide studies. This work reviews a variety of InSAR-related applications for landslide studies in Italy. More than 250 papers were analyzed in this review. The first application dates back to 1999. The average production of InSAR-related papers for landslide studies is around 12 per year, with a peak of 37 papers in 2015. Almost 70% of the papers are written by authors in academia. InSAR is used (i) for landslide back analysis (3% of the papers); (ii) for landslide characterization (40% of the papers); (iii) as input for landslide models (7% of the papers); (iv) to update landslide inventories (15% of the papers); (v) for landslide mapping (32% of the papers), and (vi) for monitoring (3% of the papers). Sixty-eight percent of the authors validated the satellite results with ground information or other remote sensing data. Although well-known limitations exist, this bibliographic overview confirms that InSAR is a consolidated tool for many landslide-related applications.
Natural gas is an indispensable resource not evenly distributed in the world. The gas supply chain is characterized by large imbalances between supply and demand, where the underground gas storage ...(UGS) application plays a key role for creating strategic reserves, taking advantage of geological structures. On the contrary, human activities will require clean energy with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions to be environmentally viable. A key element of this strategy is the carbon capture and storage (CCS) application useful for confining CO2 into the geosphere to reduce anthropogenic emissions. The development of appropriate injection methods and long-term monitoring systems for leak detection of the underground storage of natural gas and CO2 is important to prevent negative effects, such as ground deformations and micro seismic events. In this work, a variety of monitoring applications were gathered and critically analyzed for a total of 60 scientific contributions spanning the world. This bibliographic work shows an analytical and statistical overview of the most common use of UGS and CCS, representing the different goals of these two applications and analyzing the main monitoring techniques used in the gathered contributions. Currently, UGS monitoring requires further development, especially through multidisciplinary approaches useful for identifying possible effects on the surface and gas leaks at depth; meanwhile, CCS solutions are still at the experimental stage, also because of the high costs for large-scale applications that still need specific research. The state of the art of these two very different practices can improve the further development of new monitoring approaches or additional methods.
Landslides are the most frequent and diffuse natural hazards in Italy causing the greatest number of fatalities and damage to urban areas. The integration of natural hazard information and social ...media data could improve warning systems to enhance the awareness of disaster managers and citizens about emergency events. The news about landslide events in newspapers or crowdsourcing platforms allows fast observation, surveying and classification. Currently, few studies have been produced on the combination of social media data and traditional sensors. This gap indicates that it is unclear how their integration can effectively provide emergency managers with appropriate knowledge. In this work, rainfall, human lives, and earmarked fund data sources were correlated to "landslide news". Analysis was applied to obtain information about temporal (2010-2019) and spatial (regional and warning hydrological zone scale) distribution. The temporal distribution of the data shows a continuous increase from 2015 until 2019 for both landslide and rainfall events. The number of people involved and the amount of earmarked funds do not exhibit any clear trend. The spatial distribution displays good correlation between "landslide news", traditional sensors (e.g., pluviometers) and possible effects in term of fatalities. In addition, the cost of soil protection, in monetary terms, indicates the effects of events.
The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) can be combined to achieve different goals, owing to their main principles. Both enable the ...collection of information about ground deformation due to the differences of two consequent acquisitions. Their variable applications, even if strictly related to ground deformation and water vapor determination, have encouraged the scientific community to combine GNSS and InSAR data and their derivable products. In this work, more than 190 scientific contributions were collected spanning the whole European continent. The spatial and temporal distribution of such studies, as well as the distinction in different fields of application, were analyzed. Research in Italy, as the most represented nation, with 47 scientific contributions, has been dedicated to the spatial and temporal distribution of its studied phenomena. The state-of-the-art of the various applications of these two combined techniques can improve the knowledge of the scientific community and help in the further development of new approaches or additional applications in different fields. The demonstrated usefulness and versability of the combination of GNSS and InSAR remote sensing techniques for different purposes, as well as the availability of free data, EUREF and GMS (Ground Motion Service), and the possibility of overcoming some limitations of these techniques through their combination suggest an increasingly widespread approach.
Subsidence phenomena, as well as landslides and floods, are one of the main geohazards affecting the Tuscany region (central Italy). The monitoring of related ground deformations plays a key role in ...their management to avoid problems for buildings and infrastructure. In this scenario, Earth observation offers a better solution in terms of costs and benefits than traditional techniques (e.g., GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) or levelling networks), especially for wide area applications. In this work, the subsidence-related ground motions in the Firenze–Prato–Pistoia plain were back-investigated to track the evolution of displacement from 2003 to 2017 by means of multi-interferometric analysis of ENVISAT and Sentinel-1 imagery combined with GNSS data. The resulting vertical deformation velocities are aligned to the European Terrestrial Reference System 89 (ETRS89) datum and can be considered real velocity of displacement. The vertical ground deformation maps derived by ENVISAT and Sentinel-1 data, corrected with the GNSS, show how the area affected by subsidence for the period 2003–2010 and the period 2014–2017 evolved. The differences between the two datasets in terms of the extension and velocity values were analysed and then associated with the geological setting of the basin and external factors, e.g., new greenhouses and nurseries. This analysis allowed for reconstructing the evolution of the subsidence for the area of interest showing an increment of ground deformation in the historic centre of Pistoia Town, a decrement of subsidence in the nursery area between Pistoia and Prato cities, and changes in the industrial sector close to Prato.
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