Minimizing the residual topography effect on interferograms to improve DInSAR results: estimating land subsidence in Port-Said City, Egypt
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Published version
Date
2017-07-21
Authors
Gaber, Ahmed
Darwish, Noura
Koch, Magaly
Version
OA Version
Citation
A Gaber, N Darwish, M Koch. 2017. "Minimizing the Residual Topography Effect on Interferograms to Improve DInSAR Results: Estimating Land Subsidence in Port-Said City, Egypt." Remote Sensing, Volume 9, Issue 7, pp. 752 - 752.
Abstract
The accurate detection of land subsidence rates in urban areas is important to identify damage-prone areas and provide decision-makers with useful information. Meanwhile, no precise measurements of land subsidence have been undertaken within the coastal Port-Said City in Egypt to evaluate its hazard in relationship to sea-level rise. In order to address this shortcoming, this work introduces and evaluates a methodology that substantially improves small subsidence rate estimations in an urban setting. Eight ALOS/PALSAR-1 scenes were used to estimate the land subsidence rates in Port-Said City, using the Small BAse line Subset (SBAS) DInSAR technique. A stereo pair of ALOS/PRISM was used to generate an accurate DEM to minimize the residual topography effect on the generated interferograms. A total of 347 well distributed ground control points (GCP) were collected in Port-Said City using the leveling instrument to calibrate the generated DEM. Moreover, the eight PALSAR scenes were co-registered using 50 well-distributed GCPs and used to generate 22 interferogram pairs. These PALSAR interferograms were subsequently filtered and used together with the coherence data to calculate the phase unwrapping. The phase-unwrapped interferogram-pairs were then evaluated to discard four interferograms that were affected by phase jumps and phase ramps. Results confirmed that using an accurate DEM (ALOS/PRISM) was essential for accurately detecting small deformations. The vertical displacement rate during the investigated period (2007–2010) was estimated to be −28 mm. The results further indicate that the northern area of Port-Said City has been subjected to higher land subsidence rates compared to the southern area. Such land subsidence rates might induce significant environmental changes with respect to sea-level rise.
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License
Attribution 4.0 International