Application of Sentinel-1 InSAR to monitor tailings dams and predict geotechnical instability: practical considerations based on case study insights

Abstract

Tailings storage facilities (TSFs) impound mining waste behind dams to ensure public safety, but failure incidents have prompted calls for more robust monitoring programs. Satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has grown in popularity due to its ability to remotely detect millimeter-scale displacements in most urban and some natural terrains. However, there remains a limited understanding of whether InSAR can be as accurate or representative as on-the-ground instruments, whether failures can be predicted in advance using InSAR, and what variables govern the quality and reliability of InSAR results. To address these gaps, we analyze open-source, medium-resolution Sentinel-1 data to undertake a ground-truth assessment at a test site and a forensic analysis of five failure cases. We use a commercial software with an automated Persistent Scatterer (PS) workflow (SARScape Analytics) for all case study sites except one and a proprietary algorithm (SqueeSAR) with a dual PS and Distributed Scatterer (DS) algorithm for the ground-truth site and one forensic case. The main goal is to deliver practical insights regarding the influence of algorithm/satellite selection, environmental conditions, site activity, coherence thresholds, satellite-dam geometry, and failure modes. We conclude that Sentinel-1 InSAR can serve as a hazard-screening tool to help guide where to undertake targeted investigations; however, most potential failure modes may not exhibit InSAR-detectable accelerations that could assist with time-of-failure prediction in real time. As such, long-term monitoring programs should ideally be integrated with a combination of remote sensing and field instrumentation to best support engineering practice and judgment.