A beginners guide to InSAR
This time we’re coming at you with a post that is going to be one of the more technical, informative ones.
So if you’re keen on learning more about satellite monitoring, or more specifically InSAR and what it does, then this is a great place to start, especially if you are new to our blog, so welcome! :)
What in the world is InSAR?
Interferometric Synthetic-Aperture Radar, or InSAR for short, is a remote-sensing radar technique, used for monitoring ground and infrastructure movement.
Simply put, it goes something like this:
The satellites (in our case Sentinel 1) have been orbiting the Earth since 2015, and are revisiting the same spot every 6 or 12 days, giving us historical and new data by producing images of the structures and land of the Earth below…
…and produce a bunch of images that are then stacked on top of each other.
A smart InSAR wizard, a scientist, with the help of complex algorithms will compare these images to one another. More specifically, compare the signal phase shifts.
Voila! Now you can determine the motion over time of those structures with millimetre precision!
Easier said than done? Of course it is much more complicated than that and cannot be easily explained in one blog post. But don’t worry! If you are interested in understanding SAR and Change Detection or learn about the software available for processing satellite data yourself, EO59 also offers training courses! Read about our training opportunities and take a look at the sample course structure here.
Land movement is normal
Now if land moves all the time anyway, why should we be concerned?
Well, in the general sense the problem isn’t in this elastic, for example seasonal movement. It’s when something moves in one direction and never goes back to its original state.
From the stacked images and the points displayed to us, we can spot this movement with millimetre accuracy and predict the effects it can bring about. In some cases, a single drastic movement can lead to a catastrophe.
The almighty InSAR and its wonders
What makes satellite monitoring so unique and valuable, is that it can produce these images even at night, and in any weather condition, whether it is cloudy, snowing, or storming. It will maintain the millimetre scale accuracy and give us all the desired juicy data over the span of days, weeks, months, and years. And we will process it, and have the results for you on our 3D platform in no time :)
However, there can be occasions where the satellite can’t pick up any signals from an area of interest, whether it’s because it’s densely vegetated or just not reflective enough. Fortunately, we can simply solve this issue by installing a trihedral metal object, an artificial reflector, which we can also provide from our side. You see what these reflectors look like and read more about them here.
What can this technology be used for?
Well, as we mentioned before, we have access to historical data starting from 2015 (and even older data, if we consider other satellites!) This data can be used to investigate prior failures as well as compare it to new incoming information, which helps us spot deformation trends and make better risk assessments. Visit our data page to learn more about our historic and annual monitoring service.
It can be used to monitor any stationary structures or sites including airport runways, dams, pipelines, mining locations, cities, and in case you were wondering - yes even your home :)
Additionally, we can detect ground motion and its subsidence, which can either be caused by subsurface mining or oil/water extractions from reservoirs located underneath the ground.
And well, if you’re concerned about topical issues like sea level rise, then yes, we can do that too :)
For example, we can take a look at aquifers that are being depleted more rapidly than ever. As the water levels are decreasing, consequently the surface above the aquifer has been subsiding. It is a global challenge. Surface water runoff will no longer absorb to replenish the aquifer rates as naturally intended and abatement is relatively recent.
Let us know in the comments if you’re interested to learn more about aquifer depletion, sea level rise and ground subsidence and we can go into further detail on these topics in one of our next posts!
And this brings us to the end of this blog post. This amazing InSAR wizardry is what we’re best at and spend the vast majority of our time doing - that is, when we're not out here preaching about how great it truly is and how not enough people aren’t already using this :)
And if anyone was wondering, then this awesome little video was what gave us the inspiration for writing this particular post. We know you can’t just help but wonder: “What are this?”
Does anybody know the answer to any of that? What are this? What are this? WHAT ARE THIS?
InSAR is one of many Karine Veersalu’s passions. She is a law student and legal research assistant at the Tallinn University of Technology, who has studied and participated in leadership and education programs around the world.
As our Executive Assistant at EO59, she has taken an active role to provide support in client communications, internal administration, tax and legal compliance, and marketing to ensure the smooth-running nature of EO59 and advocating for driving the highest value developments to clients.