Investigation on mining subsidence over Appin–West Cliff Colliery using time-series SAR interferometry

ABSTRACT

Advanced Time Series InSAR (ATS-InSAR) generally refers to those TS-InSAR methods with an external distributed scatterer selection module, e.g. SqueeSAR™, and GEOS-ATSA (Advanced Time-Series Analysis). It is being known as a very efficient tool for monitoring ground deformation over suburban or non-urban regions with great success. However, research conducted using C-band Envisat-based ATS-InSAR failed to produce reasonable outcome within Appin Colliery primarily due to the underground mining effect, which is located in the southeastern corner of the Southern Coalfield, New South Wales, Australia; thus, the general underground mining pattern cannot be formed. This work presents a modified ATS-InSAR method for mapping the ground deformation over underground mining region. More specifically, in order to achieve the best outcome, a modified measurement scatterer (MS) pixel selection method is introduced by including less reliable MS pixels through an Inverse Distance Weighted-based integration method. In addition, the proposed method is also applied to C-band Sentinel-1 image stacks for testing purpose, and the final result proved to be efficient to offer sufficient information to the mining industry and government for risk management purpose.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported under Australian Research Council’s Discovery funding scheme (project number DP130101694). We would like to thank the Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAS) for providing the ALOS-1 PALSAR data. JAXA and METI hold the ownership of the ALOS PALSAR original data. We would also like to thank the European Space Agency (ESA) for providing the Envisat ASAR and Sentinel-1 data, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

LG and XL proposed the topic and evaluated the accuracy of the results, ZD performed the entire analysis and wrote the manuscript, and AN helped with the TS-InSAR analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (project number DP130101694).