Monitoring of ground deformation in Beijing using SBAS-DInSAR technique

We applied the Small BAseline Subset Differential Interferometic SAR (SBAS-DInSAR) technique to study the city of Beijing (China) aiming to detect and measure the surface movements of buildings and urban structures. The available SAR dataset has been used coming from Envisat ASAR and ranges the period 2003-2009. The SBAS deformation map shows a general stability in the most areas except for some very local areas affected by displacement rate larger than -10 mm/year. These large displacement places mostly happen in the high rapid developed regions caused by the urbanization. The main city areas are stable with very small displacement. The result is very helpful for indicating the urban development.