Earth Observation and InSAR Guidelines for Infrastructure
EO or Earth Observation includes a wide suite of space based technologies that use satellites to detect, measure and monitor. Some of the most well known applications are climate-related from methane emissions to oil spillages, but they span to lesser-known applications such as insurance with maritime cargo tracking.
InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) is maybe less well known yet an important technology within EO.
Beyond climate, environment and natural disaster management that have been traditional fields of application, other industries are benefiting. The infrastructure industry to name one. The widened horizons of applications is due to technological improvements to both spatial and temporal resolutions in the last few decades.
For infrastructure this meant the ability to deploy them to map sub-surface conditions, such as moisture, a key consideration to structural design, measure heat emissions, to control for heat islands or continuously monitor ground movement, for a cost-effective management of critical infrastructure.
CIRIA as an organisation does a lot of work within the built environment and construction sectors to share research, knowledge and best practice. Their publication of “InSAR and Earth Observation Techniques for infrastructure” includes the Lower Thames Crossing case study where I deployed these techniques during the preliminary design phase.
‘The Moraines of Malaspina’. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The work provided a unique example of leveraging EO and InSAR to support ground investigations. It helped gathering and understanding historical ground movements, moisture, vegetation, geomorphology and soil. The combination of these technologies supported the work of design teams to mitigate risks, landscape and flood teams to inform future drainage models and most interestingly provided confidence to key stakeholders that their disused railway had not moved too much.
The CIRIA paper discusses the infrastructure industry need for understanding, accessing and adopting EO/InSAR. It provides a useful summary of data products and techniques, practical applications as case studies - including the Lower Thames Crossing project - with an overview on planning and implementing on projects.
It’s a good start and as they state, although not comprehensive on all the EO techniques, it gives a good grounding for an industry that has yet to fully leverage the power of EO. Looking forward, there is great potential to bring in business and encourage further use, testing and case studies that would bolster the knowledge base corpus and increase uptake.
For the infrastructure industry ESA and their Space4Infrastructure programme is and can represent additional stimulus to accelerate adoption.
In summary, I think there is much potential to come from and for the infrastructure industry. I would be remiss if I did not add that we need to do more to work outside of sectors, industries and technologies - the value in adopting a wider and more holistic approach and integrating with other geospatial technologies, such as drones and geophysics, remains relatively untapped and could add immense value. Be sure to stay tuned for more on this shortly!
Guidance: https://www.ciria.org/CIRIA/CIRIA/Item_Detail.aspx?iProductCode=C805&Category=BOOK
Presentation: https://youtu.be/5f67AHzEB2Q?si=BQrI_q6QycC9TuKD.
Enjoy and leave a comment or get in touch to know more.
