Approaching target: A service for nationwide deformation monitoring in Denmark using Sentinel-1

Building upon decades of experience with deformation monitoring from repeated precision leveling and GNSS measurements as well as more recent time series analyses of ERS, Envisat, and Sentinel-1 imagery, we are now working towards a nationwide mapping using Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide Swath (IWS) mode data.

The mission’s high spatio-temporal resolution yields multiple new potentials, one of which is the focus of this work: The establishment of an operational service for a nationwide monitoring of vertical land deformations in Denmark. We present deformation rates over selected test sites, obtained by applying Persistent Scatterer Interferometry to nearly two years of Sentinel-1 IWS data.

They clearly demonstrate the potential in using such observations to identify areas undergoing rapid changes, so-called hotspots. Close collaborations with end-users show that the high-resolution information is relevant for, e.g., climate change adaptation and for optimizing renovation works of subsurface pipelines.

Other relevant end-users represent road authorities, insurance companies, local authorities, etc. A nationwide mapping therefore is associated with great potentials for optimizing processes in both the public and private sectors. This will inevitably lead to significant economic savings. The test study makes up part of the foundation for establishing a nationwide service.

As such, the results over the test sites will be presented to a broad range of end-users to identify their needs for the full-scale, technical solution. Furthermore, we investigate how to optimally exploit our network of in-situ measurements as well as a national uplift model to generate absolute deformation rates with a mm-accuracy.

Combined with the close involvement of end-users, we focus on developing a service tailored to specific needs, which increases the probability of its implementation in both the public and private sectors. Presenting the results obtained on the road to setting up a nationwide deformation monitoring will clearly demonstrate the potentials arising with the continuous stream of Sentinel-1 IWS data.