InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data
Advances in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry have enabled the seamless monitoring of the Earth’s crust deformation. The dense archive of the Sentinel-1 Copernicus mission provides unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage; however, time-series analysis of such big data volumes require...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2020-10-01
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| Series: | Remote Sensing |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/19/3207 |
| _version_ | 1797552084060471296 |
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| author | Ioannis Papoutsis Charalampos Kontoes Stavroula Alatza Alexis Apostolakis Constantinos Loupasakis |
| author_facet | Ioannis Papoutsis Charalampos Kontoes Stavroula Alatza Alexis Apostolakis Constantinos Loupasakis |
| author_sort | Ioannis Papoutsis |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Advances in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry have enabled the seamless monitoring of the Earth’s crust deformation. The dense archive of the Sentinel-1 Copernicus mission provides unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage; however, time-series analysis of such big data volumes requires high computational efficiency. We present a parallelized-PSI (P-PSI), a novel, parallelized, and end-to-end processing chain for the fully automated assessment of line-of-sight ground velocities through persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI), tailored to scale to the vast multitemporal archive of Sentinel-1 data. P-PSI is designed to transparently access different and complementary Sentinel-1 repositories, and download the appropriate datasets for PSI. To make it efficient for large-scale applications, we re-engineered and parallelized interferogram creation and multitemporal interferometric processing, and introduced distributed implementations to best use computing cores and provide resourceful storage management. We propose a new algorithm to further enhance the processing efficiency, which establishes a non-uniform patch grid considering land use, based on the expected number of persistent scatterers. P-PSI achieves an overall speed-up by a factor of five for a full Sentinel-1 frame for processing in a 20-core server. The processing chain is tested on a large-scale project to calculate and monitor deformation patterns over the entire extent of the Greek territory—our own Interferometric SAR (InSAR) Greece project. Time-series InSAR analysis was performed on volumes of about 12 TB input data corresponding to more than 760 Single Look Complex Sentinel-1A and B images mostly covering mainland Greece in the period of 2015–2019. InSAR Greece provides detailed ground motion information on more than 12 million distinct locations, providing completely new insights into the impact of geophysical and anthropogenic activities at this geographic scale. This new information is critical to enhancing our understanding of the underlying mechanisms, providing valuable input into risk assessment models. We showcase this through the identification of various characteristic geohazard locations in Greece and discuss their criticality. The selected geohazard locations, among a thousand, cover a wide range of catastrophic events including landslides, land subsidence, and structural failures of various scales, ranging from a few hundredths of square meters up to the basin scale. The study enriches the large catalog of geophysical related phenomena maintained by the GeObservatory portal of the Center of Earth Observation Research and Satellite Remote Sensing BEYOND of the National Observatory of Athens for the opening of new knowledge to the wider scientific community. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:54:55Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-597e630d912a48f2bfb2c1505a71cac0 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2072-4292 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:54:55Z |
| publishDate | 2020-10-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Remote Sensing |
| spelling | doaj.art-597e630d912a48f2bfb2c1505a71cac02023-11-20T15:46:30ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922020-10-011219320710.3390/rs12193207InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 DataIoannis Papoutsis0Charalampos Kontoes1Stavroula Alatza2Alexis Apostolakis3Constantinos Loupasakis4National Observatory of Athens, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, GR-152 36 Athens, GreeceNational Observatory of Athens, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, GR-152 36 Athens, GreeceNational Observatory of Athens, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, GR-152 36 Athens, GreeceNational Observatory of Athens, Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, GR-152 36 Athens, GreeceSchool of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Department of Geological Sciences, Zographou Campus, National Technical University of Athens, GR-157 80 Athens, GreeceAdvances in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry have enabled the seamless monitoring of the Earth’s crust deformation. The dense archive of the Sentinel-1 Copernicus mission provides unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage; however, time-series analysis of such big data volumes requires high computational efficiency. We present a parallelized-PSI (P-PSI), a novel, parallelized, and end-to-end processing chain for the fully automated assessment of line-of-sight ground velocities through persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI), tailored to scale to the vast multitemporal archive of Sentinel-1 data. P-PSI is designed to transparently access different and complementary Sentinel-1 repositories, and download the appropriate datasets for PSI. To make it efficient for large-scale applications, we re-engineered and parallelized interferogram creation and multitemporal interferometric processing, and introduced distributed implementations to best use computing cores and provide resourceful storage management. We propose a new algorithm to further enhance the processing efficiency, which establishes a non-uniform patch grid considering land use, based on the expected number of persistent scatterers. P-PSI achieves an overall speed-up by a factor of five for a full Sentinel-1 frame for processing in a 20-core server. The processing chain is tested on a large-scale project to calculate and monitor deformation patterns over the entire extent of the Greek territory—our own Interferometric SAR (InSAR) Greece project. Time-series InSAR analysis was performed on volumes of about 12 TB input data corresponding to more than 760 Single Look Complex Sentinel-1A and B images mostly covering mainland Greece in the period of 2015–2019. InSAR Greece provides detailed ground motion information on more than 12 million distinct locations, providing completely new insights into the impact of geophysical and anthropogenic activities at this geographic scale. This new information is critical to enhancing our understanding of the underlying mechanisms, providing valuable input into risk assessment models. We showcase this through the identification of various characteristic geohazard locations in Greece and discuss their criticality. The selected geohazard locations, among a thousand, cover a wide range of catastrophic events including landslides, land subsidence, and structural failures of various scales, ranging from a few hundredths of square meters up to the basin scale. The study enriches the large catalog of geophysical related phenomena maintained by the GeObservatory portal of the Center of Earth Observation Research and Satellite Remote Sensing BEYOND of the National Observatory of Athens for the opening of new knowledge to the wider scientific community.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/19/3207persistent scatterer interferometrydistributed processingInSARgeohazardslandslideSergoula landslide |
| spellingShingle | Ioannis Papoutsis Charalampos Kontoes Stavroula Alatza Alexis Apostolakis Constantinos Loupasakis InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data Remote Sensing persistent scatterer interferometry distributed processing InSAR geohazards landslide Sergoula landslide |
| title | InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data |
| title_full | InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data |
| title_fullStr | InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data |
| title_full_unstemmed | InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data |
| title_short | InSAR Greece with Parallelized Persistent Scatterer Interferometry: A National Ground Motion Service for Big Copernicus Sentinel-1 Data |
| title_sort | insar greece with parallelized persistent scatterer interferometry a national ground motion service for big copernicus sentinel 1 data |
| topic | persistent scatterer interferometry distributed processing InSAR geohazards landslide Sergoula landslide |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/19/3207 |
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