Sink, swim or InSAR
Over the past decades, numerous land subsidence events have been reported in many cities around the world where the rapid urban construction and the extensive groundwater exploitation are taking place. Land subsidence can lead to serious environmental problems and considerable economic losses, such as damage to infrastructures and increased risk of urban pluvial flooding. With the global sea level rise, the situation is even worse.
Thus, the demand for monitoring the spatial and temporal distribution of land subsidence is increasing. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)is an effective way to measure changes in land surface altitude. InSAR makes high-density measurements over large areas by using radar signals from Earth-orbiting satellites to measure changes in land-surface altitude at high degrees of measurement resolution and spatial detail. The data will help state and local agencies plan for the future and provide improved hazard maps for cities and emergency response agencies. For example, using precise measurements of subsidence around the Bay Area between 2007 and 2011 from InSAR, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Arizona State University predicted that San Francisco International Airport’s runways will be flooded by 2100 because of sea level rise and subsidence of landfill used to construct the airport, which would raise awareness and help the agency to take actions in advance.
In the future, more advanced analysis could be introduced to this area, such as running integrated multi-sectoral land subsidence forecast for the selections of structural. Identify land subsidence problem intelligently and solve it to establish a more sustainable and resilient urban development for us all.
