Lake Urmia bridge stability assessment: Results from TerraSAR-X spotlight mode images

Abstract

In this study we investigate stability of Lake Urmia bridge, locally also known as Shahid Kalantari's highway bridge, in northwest of Iran using high-resolution satellite radar imagery. The radar dataset includes 22 SAR images acquired in SpotLight mode from 2014 to 2015 in an ascending orbit by TerraSAR-X satellite. A high-resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the area was constructed from a pair of TanDEM-X bi-static data on June 2012 to remove the effect of topography from interferometry observations. The analysis of X-band interferograms shows high number of displacement fringes, which are interpreted as being caused by thermal dilation due to temperature differences in the imaged area between two SAR acquisitions. This effect, which can often be observed in single interferograms, have important impact on time-series products and should be considered for deformation analysis of bridge structures.