RADAR REMOTE SENSING TO SUPPLEMENT PIPELINE SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS THROUGH MEASUREMENTS OF SURFACE DEFORMATIONS AND IDENTIFICATION OF GEOHAZARD RISKS
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Date
2020-12-01
Authors
Bayramov, Emil
Buchroithner, Manfred
Kada, Martin
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract
This research focused on the quantitative assessment of the surface deformation velocities
and rates and their natural and man-made controlling factors as the potential risks along the
seismically active 70 km section of buried oil and gas pipeline in Azerbaijan using Persistent Scatterer
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PS-InSAR) and Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) remote sensing
analysis. Both techniques showed that the continuous subsidence was prevailing in the kilometer
range of 13–70 of pipelines crossing two seismic faults. The ground uplift deformations were observed
in the pipeline kilometer range of 0–13. Although both PS-InSAR and SBAS measurements were
highly consistent in deformation patterns and trends along pipelines, they showed differences in the
spatial distribution of ground deformation classes and noisiness of produced results. High dispersion
of PS-InSAR measurements caused low regression coefficients with SBAS for the entire pipeline
kilometer range of 0–70. SBAS showed better performance than PS-InSAR along buried petroleum
and gas pipelines in the following aspects: the complete coverage of the measured points, significantly
lower dispersion of the results, continuous and realistic measurements and higher accuracy of
ground deformation rates against the GPS historical measurements. As a primary factor of ground
deformations, the influence of tectonic movements was observed in the wide scale analysis along
70 km long and 10 km wide section of petroleum and gas pipelines; however, the largest subsidence
rates were observed in the areas of agricultural activities which accelerate the deformation rates
caused by the tectonic processes. The diverse spatial distribution and variation of ground movement
processes along pipelines demonstrated that general geological and geotechnical understanding of
the study area is not sufficient to find and mitigate all the critical sites of subsidence and uplifts for
the pipeline operators. This means that both techniques outlined in this paper provide a significant
improvement for ground deformation monitoring or can significantly contribute to the assessment of
geohazards and preventative countermeasures along petroleum and gas pipelines.
Description
Keywords
PS-InSAR, SBAS, remote sensing, geospatial, pipelines, oil and gas, radar, interferometry, Research Subject Categories::NATURAL SCIENCES
Citation
Bayramov, E., Buchroithner, M., & Kada, M. (2020). Radar Remote Sensing to Supplement Pipeline Surveillance Programs through Measurements of Surface Deformations and Identification of Geohazard Risks. Remote Sensing, 12(23), 3934. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12233934