Analysis of surface deformations over the whole Italian territory by interferometric processing of ERS, Envisat and COSMO-SkyMed radar data

Abstract Interferometric processing of series of data acquired over time by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites makes it possible to measure millimetric deformations (typically due to landslides, subsidence and earthquake or volcanic phenomena) and to monitor the stability of terrain and infrastructures. Despite the unique capability to observe very large areas, this technology has been typically applied to the analysis of relatively small sites or specific geophysical phenomena. In this work, we present the first application of this technology to a national scale project, which required the processing, through advanced persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) techniques, of about 20,000 SAR images acquired from 1992 to 2014 over the whole Italian territory by the ERS, Envisat, and COSMO-SkyMed satellites. The obtained results provide a huge database of surface deformation measurements covering the last 20 years and the whole Italian territory, which represents an extremely useful and pioneering service for geo-hazards mapping and prevention.