Advancements in Ground Movement Monitoring through Remote Sensing Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

The safety of structures such as houses, buildings, bridges, retaining walls, dams, in terms to their interaction with the ground, is related to excessive ground displacement which affects the structure and comparing it to a tolerable displacement. Tolerable displacement which may vary from (a) a few centimeters to (b) meters. An example of case (a) is a critical mountain slope with a building structure on it and an example of case (b) is a critical mountain slope with a road at some distance from it. It is inferred that, accurate evaluation of displacement varying from a few millimeters to meters may be needed.

Ground movement may occur in sloping ground due to shear failure as a result of factors such as earthquakes or rainfall. Ground movement may occur also in level ground due to settlement as a result of densification due for example water table lowering, or due to shear failure settlement as a result of applied load, cavity collapse or movement of a nearby existing fault.

Often ground movement does not occur abruptly, but progresses with time. Pumping-induced ground settlement and creeping slopes are typical examples. Thus, monitoring ground method is an important method to evaluate the displacement-induced risk and prevention of geological disaster including land subsidence and landslides.

Visual inspection, crack meters, surveying/prisms and inclinometers and extensometers are examples of the conventional geotechnical instruments for monitoring the surface and subsurface ground movement. Some of these methods have recently been used with automated measuring systems, e.g. robotic total stations, Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS), but they cannot be defined as fully “remote” since they need targets or sensors installed on the ground. On the other hand, in recent years, digital image correlation techniques have emerged as a remote displacement measurement method, due to its advantages of low cost, and full-field deformation measurement. These techniques are based on the comparison of images, gathered at different times, typically from aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or satellites. For each source, methods have been developed to obtain ground movement from these images. As an example, regarding data gathered from satellites, recently, monitoring of ground deformation at centimeter to millimeter resolution has been achieved in some studies with the spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry method.

The importance and current rapid development of the field of ground monitoring, described above, makes it an important field for publications of both research and novel engineering project results. Validation of ground displacement measurements with other methods at some locations is strongly recommended. Furthermore, physical interpretation of measured ground movement is very important to evaluate future risk.

Dr. Constantine A. Stamatopoulos
Dr. Angelos Protopapas
Prof. Dr. Baofeng Di
Dr. Giordano Teza
Guest Editors

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• ground displacement
• measurements
• landslides
• slope instability
• ground subsidence risk
• inSAR
• SAR
• global navigation satellite system (GNSS)
• terrestrial laser scanner (TLS)
• unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)

Visual inspection, crack meters, surveying/prisms and inclinometers and extensometers are examples of the conventional geotechnical instruments for monitoring the surface and subsurface ground movement. Some of these methods have recently been used with automated measuring systems, e.g. robotic total stations, Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS), but they cannot be defined as fully “remote” since they need targets or sensors installed on the ground. On the other hand, in recent years, digital image correlation techniques have emerged as a remote displacement measurement method, due to its advantages of low cost, and full-field deformation measurement. These techniques are based on the comparison of images, gathered at different times, typically from aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or satellites. For each source, methods have been developed to obtain ground movement from these images. As an example, regarding data gathered from satellites, recently, monitoring of ground deformation at centimeter to millimeter resolution has been achieved in some studies with the spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry method.