Monitoring Displacements and Damage Detection through Satellite MT-InSAR Techniques: A New Methodology and Application to a Case Study in Rome (Italy)

Abstract

Satellite interferometry has recently developed as a powerful tool for monitoring displacements on structures for structural health monitoring (SHM), as it allows obtaining information on past deformation and performing back analysis on structural behavior. Despite the increasing literature on this subject, the lack of protocols for applying and interpreting interferometric data for structural assessment prevents these techniques from being employed alongside conventional SHM. This paper proposes a methodology for exploiting satellite interferometric data aiming at remotely detecting displacements and buildings’ criticalities at different levels of analysis, i.e., urban scale and single-building scale. Moreover, this research exploits the capability of satellite monitoring for damage diagnosis, comparing the millimeter scale displacements to information derived from on-site inspections. Different data-driven algorithms were applied to detect seasonal and irreversible components of displacements, such as statistical models for damage identification derived from traditional on-site monitoring. Thus, the proposed methodology was applied to a XVI-century case study located in the city center of Rome (Italy), Palazzo Primoli, and two stocks of COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) images processed through the Small BAseline Subset Differential Interferometry (SBAS-DInSAR) technique were used to assess displacements for an eight-year-long (between 2011 and 2019) monitoring period.