A short review on persistent scatterer interferometry techniques for surface deformation monitoring

Technology advancement has urged the development of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to be upgraded and transformed. The main contribution of the InSAR technique is that the surface deformation changes measurements can achieve up to millimetre level precision. Environmental problems such as landslides, volcanoes, earthquakes, excessive underground water production, and other phenomena can cause the earth's surface deformation. Deformation monitoring of a surface is vital as unexpected movement, and future behaviour can be detected and predicted. InSAR time series analysis, known as Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI), has become an essential tool for measuring surface deformation. Therefore, this study provides a review of the PSI techniques used to measure surface deformation changes. An overview of surface deformation and the basic principles of the four techniques that have been developed from the improvement of Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSAR), which is Small Baseline Subset (SBAS), Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS), SqueeSAR and Quasi Persistent Scatterer (QPS) were summarised to perceive the ability of these techniques in monitoring surface deformation. This study also emphasises the effectiveness and restrictions of each developed technique and how they suit Malaysia conditions and environment. The future outlook for Malaysia in realising the PSI techniques for structural monitoring also discussed in this review. Finally, this review will lead to the implementation of appropriate techniques and better preparation for the country's structural development

Assessment of coastal altimetry data in the South China Sea using multiple frequency approaches

With a coastline length extending over 13, 000 km, including the Malaysia region, the South China Sea presents a challenge to retrieve high quality data along the coastal area especially the sea level anomaly and significant wave height. Currently, coastal altimetry is still facing some issues especially when using the low frequency data such as data lacking near the coast, questionable data accuracy since the altimeter footprint contaminated with the land and less coverage of data from the installed ground truth data. This study aims to assess the coastal altimetry data of sea level and significant wave height in the South China Sea using low and high frequency approaches. This study involved deriving data from sea level anomaly (SLA) and significant wave height (SWH) through the use of Prototype for Expertise on AltiKa for Coastal, Hydrology and Ice (PEACHI) for high frequency and Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS) for low frequency of altimetry and ground truth station which is from tide gauge and Acoustic Wave and Current Profiler (AWAC). Comparison between altimetry and ground truth data has been made in order to validate the significant agreement between them. The validation of the data is to evaluate both types of frequencies with respect to the coastal distance. Consequently, the high frequency results for coastal results with a root mean square reliable ±0.14 metre level for the sea level anomaly (SLA) and ±0.18 metre level for significant wave height (SWH) are more reliable. PEACHI distance-to-coast data obtained a sufficient standard residual deviation ranging from 0 cm to 2.87 cm compared to RADS altimetry ranging from 0.08 cm to 14.20 cm. The findings of this study indicate that the coastal altimetry data benefit coastal development, coastal defence, monitoring and tourism by various related agencies

The use of InSAR for monitoring deformation of offshore platforms

Fluid extraction or injection from reservoirs, which corresponds to subsidence or uplift, can cause offshore platform surface deformation. Extremely large deformation of offshore platforms often lead to production losses, threat to the structure integrity and loss of life. Therefore, preventing severe deformation incidents is important by monitoring surface deformation caused by oil and gas production activities. In this study, the A1 and B1 offshore platforms have been selected as research study areas to detect surface deformation caused by production activities. A total of 12 radar images from TerraSAR-X satellite were obtained from 24th August 2018 to 22nd August 2019 to derive surface deformation through the Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS) method. The maximum amounts of subsidence observed on A1 and B1 platforms were -4 mm/yr and -6.3 mm/yr, respectively. This study provides an important insight the use of InSAR technology for the monitoring deformation of offshore platforms