Multi-Decadal Land Subsidence Risk Assessment at Major Italian Cities by Integrating PSInSAR with Urban Vulnerability

Michelle Lenardón Sánchez, Celina Anael Farías and Francesca Cigna ()
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Michelle Lenardón Sánchez: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Rome, Italy
Celina Anael Farías: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Rome, Italy
Francesca Cigna: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Rome, Italy

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-34

Abstract: This study assesses subsidence-induced risk to urban infrastructure in three major Italian cities—Rome, Bologna, and Florence—by integrating satellite-based persistent scatterer interferometric synthetic aperture radar (PSInSAR) ground displacement data with urban vulnerability metrics into a novel risk assessment workflow, incorporating land use and population data from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS)—Urban Atlas. This analysis exploits ERS-1/2, ENVISAT, and COSMO-SkyMed PSInSAR datasets from the Italian Extraordinary Plan of Environmental Remote Sensing, plus Sentinel-1 datasets from CLMS—European Ground Motion Service (EGMS), and spans a 30-year period, thus capturing both historical and recent subsidence trends. Angular distortion is introduced as a critical parameter for assessing potential structural damage due to differential settlement, which helps to quantify subsidence-induced hazards more precisely. The results reveal variable subsidence hazard patterns across the three cities, with specific areas exhibiting significant differential ground deformation that poses risks to key infrastructure. A total of 36.15, 11.44, and 0.43 km 2 of land at high to very high risk are identified in Rome, Bologna, and Florence, respectively. By integrating geospatial and vulnerability data at the building-block level, this study offers a more comprehensive understanding of subsidence-induced risk, potentially contributing to improved management and mitigation strategies in urban areas. This study contributes to the limited literature on embedding PSInSAR data into urban risk assessment workflows and provides a replicable framework for future applications in other urban areas.

Keywords: subsidence; InSAR; persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI); EGMS; PST-A; geological hazards; risk assessment; Copernicus Urban Atlas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:13:y:2024:i:12:p:2103-:d:1537424

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