Structural health monitoring is a crucial issue in areas with different hazard sources, such as Italy. Among non-invasive monitoring techniques, remote sensing provides useful information in supporting the management process and safety evaluations, reducing the impact of disturbances on the functionality of construction systems. The ground displacement time-series based on the analysis of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) measurements, as well as the information about the geology of the area and the geometry of the construction under monitoring, provides useful data for the built environment’s structural assessment. This paper focuses on the structural monitoring and damage assessment of constructions based on the GIS integration of DInSAR measurements, geological investigation, historical surveys and 3D modeling. The methodology is applied to the residential area of Valco San Paolo in the city of Rome (Italy). Once the geological interpretation has confirmed the results of the DInSAR measurements, a quick damage assessment that considers all the possible conditions of the pre-existing damage at the time zero of the monitoring is shown for a damaged manufact in the area. The presented results highlight how the strategy to correlate the DInSAR-monitored ground settlements with the damage scales allows potentially to monitor continuous construction systems.

The Afghanistan earthquake of 21 June 2022 ruptured a ~10 km-long fault segment in the North Waziristan–Bannu fault system (NWBFS) located towards the north of the Katawaz Basin. The earthquake was shallow and reportedly caused widespread devastation. In this article, we investigated the long-term, i.e., geological and geomorphological, evidence of deformation along the earthquake segment. For comparison, we also studied the short-term space geodetic and remote sensing results documenting a visible offset between the fault traces. Focusing on the fault modelling and on the published results, it is thus clear that the earthquake rupture did not reach the surface; instead, it stopped in the shallow sub-surface at ~1 km depth. Moreover, the InSAR analyses show some technical issues, such as coherence loss, etc., likely due to severe ground-shaking leaving some gaps in the results; geological and geomorphological evidence complemented this information. As an outcome of this research, we confirmed that InSAR results could generally capture the overall fault geometry at depth, even in cases of blind faulting, whereas the detailed geometry of the tectonic structure, in this case with a right stepping en-echelon pattern, could be successfully captured by combining it with geological and geomorphological approaches and optical remote sensing observations. Accordingly, the right stepping fault generates a restraining bend in the dominantly left-lateral shear zone. Therefore, such fault stepovers are capable of localizing strain and could act as loci for seismic ruptures, bearing strong implications for the seismic hazard assessment of the region, as well as of other strike-slip fault zones.

The Afghanistan earthquake of 21 June 2022 occurred on an ~10 km-long fault segment of the North Waziristan–Bannu Fault system (NWBFS) located towards the north of the Katawaz Basin. The earthquake was a shallow event that reportedly caused widespread devastation across the affected region. In this note, we investigated the long-term, i.e. geological and geomorphological evidence of deformation along the earthquake segment. For comparison, we also studied the short-term space geodetic and remote sensing results documenting a visible offset between the fault traces observed based on the two different methodologies. Focusing on the fault modelling and on published results, it is thus clear that the earthquake rupture did not reach the surface, instead it stopped in the shallow sub-surface at ~1 km-depth. Moreover, the InSAR analyses show some technical issues such as coherence loss etc., likely due to severe ground shaking leaving some gaps in the results; geological and geomorphological evidence complemented this information and contributed to filling these gaps. As a further outcome of this research, we confirm that the InSAR results could generally capture the overall fault geometry at depth even in case of blind faulting, whereas the detailed geometry of the tectonic structure, in this case with a right stepping en-echelon pattern could be successfully captured by the geological and geomorphological approaches and optical remote sensing observations. Accordingly, the right stepping along the major reactivated fault generates a restraining bend in the dominantly left-lateral crustal shear zone. Therefore, such fault stepovers are capable of localizing strain and could act as loci for seismic ruptures bearing strong implications for the seismic hazard assessment of the region as well as of other strike-slip fault zones.

Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) techniques have emerged as powerful tools for monitoring and surveillance at both single-building and territorial levels, offering sub-centimetric accuracy with manageable costs. Among these techniques, the DInSAR method known as Small BAseline Subset (SBAS) and its parallel algorithmic implementation, referred to as the Parallel SBAS (P-SBAS) approach, stand out for their ability to provide systematic displacement measurements at both regional, national and continental scales through the generation of spatially and temporally dense deformation time series, contributing to investigate various hazard scenarios related to the natural and the built-up environments. Moreover, by exploiting the full-resolution extension of the P-SBAS approach, it is also possible to generate long-term deformation time series at different spatial resolution scales for regional and local displacement investigations.This work focuses on the extensive use of the full-resolution P-SBAS approach for local-scale DInSAR analyses aimed at detecting localized deformation phenomena in wide urban areas, with a particular interest in infrastructure and individual building displacements. To this aim, we can profitably capitalize on the highest spatial resolution of the SAR images collected by the currently available and future advanced satellite SAR systems characterized by different operational modes (Stripmap, TOPSAR, ScanSAR) and frequency bandwidths (L-, C-, and X-band).Among these, we leverage the extensive archives of X-band (about 3 cm wavelength) SAR data acquired since 2009 along the overall Italian territory by the sensors of the Italian COSMO-SkyMed constellation of the first (CSK) and second (CSG) generation, operated through the Stripmap mode (about 3 m x 3 m spatial resolution) within the so-called Map Italy program. This huge SAR dataset makes it possible to monitor the surface deformations affecting the built-up environment with a very high spatial and temporal measurement density. In this work, we perform a full-resolution P-SBAS analysis over some Italian cities (e.g., Roma, Napoli, Bologna, Catania), where large sequences of ascending and descending CSK/CSG SAR data are available, in order to assess the health conditions of critical infrastructures and buildings related to extended built-up environments. Moreover, we also present the preliminary full-resolution P-SBAS results achieved by processing the available L-band SAR data acquired by the new twin sensors of the Argentinian SAOCOM-1 constellation of CONAE (spatial resolution about 5x5 m). Thanks to the longer wavelength characterizing the L-Band data, we can investigate the possibilities of overcoming some of the typical limitations of X-band SAR systems (e.g., the occurrence of phase unwrapping problems). Our approach involves the use of parallel hardware and software solutions, including GPU parallel programming techniques, which prove to be highly effective in rapidly generating full-resolution P-SBAS deformation time series over large urbanized areas. These measurements can help to define a roadmap for identifying and preventing critical conditions in buildings and infrastructures.

This study investigates the coseismic displacement field caused by the Mw 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, along a segment of the Sagaing Fault, a well-known, right-lateral strike-slip fault. To such a purpose, a combination of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR)-based techniques, specifically Pixel Offset Tracking (POT), Multiple Aperture Interferometry (MAI), and SAR interferometry (InSAR), was applied to multiple Sentinel-1 SAR images covering the broad region affected by the seismic event. The retrieved deformation measurements were subsequently inverted using an analytical model to reconstruct the geometry and key parameters of the seismogenic source. In addition, a Coulomb Failure Function (CFF) analysis was performed to assess the stress transfer from the mainshock to the Mw 6.7 aftershock and determine the positive correlation between the two subsequent events. The results revealed a rupture extending approximately 490 km across three distinct fault segments, with a nearly vertical, north–south orientation and predominantly right-lateral strike-slip mechanism, in agreement with the regional tectonic setting. This comprehensive analysis offers key insights into the rupture extent and the mechanics of the major seismic event.