Tangible cultural heritage, historical buildings and bridges have an important cultural significance and economic value within the tourism industry and the identity of local communities. The preservation and the assessment of their structural health are important issues which call for multidisciplinary teams and non-invasive monitoring techniques due the uniqueness and historical values of these man-made structures. Numerical models used to study the structural behavior of these historical buildings and bridges under different adverse conditions (e.g. intense traffic flow, natural hazard events, chemical pollution or simply aging) can benefit from accurate measurements of mechanical properties such as displacements and vibration frequencies, both bringing information about the static and dynamical behavior of such historical constructions. This work presents some results of structural monitoring of man-made structures by Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR) interferometry techniques. A ku-band GBSAR interferometer is used to derive displacement maps of the monitored target, with a sub-millimeter precisions. Furthermore, GBSAR interferometry is used to measure vibration frequencies of vertical and horizontal structures, such bell towers, towers, bridges and historical walls. The main advantage of this technique is its capability to operate in any weather and sun-illumination condition, in a truly Non-Destructive Monitoring (NDM) approach, i.e. without installing any reflector on the observed target.
In this work we study the potential of C-band SAR images to map ionosphere disturbances in the Arctic region. This region is a unique region for ionosphere studies due to the characteristics of the geomagnetic field. In particular, we focus on the SAR interferometry technique as means to measure the temporal variation of propagation delay in correspondence of ionosphere disturbances. This technique provides maps of propagation delay differences between the acquisition dates of the two coherent SAR images needed to estimate the propagation delay over the study area. The high spatial resolution of C-band SAR images, in the order of 25 meters could contribute to the study of spatial distribution of ionosphere disturbances. Digisondes, VLF/ELF receivers and the EISCAT radars in the available in the Arctic region provide the time of ionosphere disturbances due to the solar activity, monitored by the ACE satellite. This allows to select the SAR images to process to map the ionosphere disturbances. The typical spatial coverage and acquisition times of Sentinel-1 images over the Arctic region are reported. A numerical analysis is carried out to estimate the expected ionosphere propagation delay in Sentinel-1 interferograms and so the potential of SAR interferometry to map the effects of ionosphere disturbances.
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