Radar Interferometric Monitoring of Vertical Ground Movements and Imposed Building Deformations Caused by Tunneling

The paper presents the use of the Persistent Scatterer technique (PS-InSAR) to monitor displacements caused by tunneling in intra-urban areas for the assessment of building damage. The first part of the paper describes the applied PS-InSAR approach based on Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry and illustrates first results of measurements gained from a current tunnel building site in Düsseldorf (Germany). Data from TerraSAR-X satellite provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are used. In the second part two approaches for structural analyses are given. On the one hand the movements of surface structures due to tunneling are visualized. On the other hand the results are used to categorize globally typical intraurban surface structures with respect to vulnerability due to settlements induced by tunneling. In order to do so, an equivalent building stiffness is derived by comparing the displacements of the upper parts of buildings (PS-InSAR derived) and foundations (terrestrial measurements).