Determination of Ash Dam Facility Surface Displacement Using InSAR

This article articulates the determination of Ash Dam Facility Surface Displacement Using InSAR at in South Africa. ADF can fail due to a variety of factors, including structural instability, seepage, or seismic activity. Therefore, using InSAR technology there is a need for threats to be identified and responded to promptly to mitigate consequences such as loss of life and property that can occur from dam failures. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a powerful remote sensing technology that has proven invaluable for monitoring the stability and integrity of ash dams. The study used Vertex, which is the Alaska Satellite Facility's (ASF) data search application for remotely sensed imagery of the earth, providing convenient and powerful discovery and download of SAR data, as well as direct access to thematic datasets. ASF Data Search is an easy-to-use search tool for finding SAR data and freely processing higher level SAR products such as InSAR and Auto-RIFT products with ASF's service. The study conducted a time series analysis using Mintpy on the OpenSAR Lab server. The Mintpy toolbox is a Python 3 software for small baseline InSAR time series analysis. The input is a stack of differential interferograms that form a fully connected network. The findings were that the ash dam facility has undergone a total displacement of 200 cm vertically and 310cm laterally. The coordinates in terms of latitude and longitude of this affected area in (7145360,739280) and (7160480, 714480) respectively. In conclusion satellite remote sensing offers a cost and time effective way to monitor large infrastructure assets which would otherwise be a very resource-demanding task via conventional methods.