Structural deformation and non-seasonal motion of single buildings in urban areas revealed by PSI

Abstract

Over the past years, several results of persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) deformation analyses based on meter resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data stacks have been shown, revealing thermal dilation effects of modern steel constructions. Besides, there exists linear motion even in urban areas of European cities where one would not expect such phenomenon to occur, at least at a first thought. A long term study shows that there are many local areas in Berlin and Munich affected by subsidence or uplift which, fortunately, do not pose a threat on human life. Nevertheless, these effects are very interesting to be analyzed in details, especially as they can be monitored by a PSI analysis, i.e., from space during a period of several years. The examples shown in this paper demonstrate the great potential of space borne high resolution radar sensors for urban monitoring tasks. In addition, a surprising kind of nonlinear - albeit non-destructive - deformation is revealed which is only known from experiments and experience, but has not been measured at a building in situ, yet.