Multitemporal inSAR coherence analysis and methods for sand mitigation

Abstract

Dunes and sand sheets motion natural hazard affect many desertic areas worldwide and require careful assessment to develop effective mitigation plans to protect populated sites, infrastructure, and human activities. The study explores the suitability of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) coherent methods to detect desert area instabilities and estimate sand accumulations displacements. The SAR methods have been applied to long time series of images provided by Sentinel-1. Moreover, the research introduces a novel robust index, named Temporal Stability Index, able to characterize the percentage of stability of a target with time. The work reports the experiments performed on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt desertic areas and proves the usefulness of SAR coherent methods to support sand mitigation measures.