A multi-sensor approach for coastal area monitoring

Abstract

This study proposes a multi-sensor approach to promote and effective coastal area monitoring strategy over areas that include critical infrastructures, e.g.; on-shore and off-shore oil/gas extraction platforms and groundwater reservoirs. The monitoring strategy includes both sea-side and land-side observations using remotely sensed measurements. With respect to the land-side, multi-temporal differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) and Global Positioning System (GPS) techniques are exploited to monitor of subsidence phenomena along on-shore hydrocarbon and groundwater reservoirs, where surface deformations can be correlated to the extraction / pumping of resources from / into the subsoil. This is a non-trivial issue, which aims at improving the standards of security for the production / exploitation / storage of underground resources, as well as providing / implementing ad-hoc procedures for the monitoring of interested. With respect to the sea-side, effective SAR techniques are exploited to take benefit of multi-polarization SARs to observe oil/gas rigs/platforms and to observe oil discharges close to the oil extraction sites.