Proving compliance of satellite InSAR technology with geotechnical design codes

In the planning stage of new infrastructure or when designing renovation of existing infrastructure, information about existing slope movements or settlements is essential to make informed design decisions. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques can be of value to identify these risks in an early stage of a project. InSAR can offer insight into the surface movements of an area from historic archives using satellite-based SAR data. Furthermore, InSAR observations can help identify zones with displacements larger than the average of an area, and be used to plan future soil investigation more effectively. Thanks to their high temporal and spatial resolution, InSAR observations can also complement in situ conventional monitoring during the construction and operational stage. Despite these possibilities, the use of InSAR is not yet standard practice in geotechnical projects and no formal guidelines are currently available to inform engineers, planners and infrastructure stakeholder on the use of InSAR-based monitoring within geotechnical design codes. Here we provide an operational framework for the practical integration of InSAR monitoring into current geotechnical design codes, such as Eurocode-7, for all project stages. The proposed framework is then demonstrated for the planning stage of a highway renovation project, focusing on an area potentially subjected to landslides where no conventional monitoring data was available at this stage. We concluded that the proposed framework is a practical and operational tool that can be used by planners and engineers in the whole lifecycle of an infrastructure project.

Automated summary

This article highlights the importance of utilizing InSAR techniques for monitoring in the planning and design stages of infrastructure projects. It provides an operational framework for integrating InSAR monitoring into geotechnical design codes and demonstrates its practicality with a case study.