Assessment of structural damage due to ground settlements by using the DInSAR technique

The remote sensing technique known as Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry (DInSAR) allows the monitoring of ground settlements, producing ground deformation maps and time series with centimeter to millimeter accuracy. These measurements can be used for the evaluation of the structural conditions of the constructions. Given the ground deformation, different approaches exist for the assessment of the structural damage; they range from empirical estimates to detailed finite element calculations. In the present work, a semi-empirical model is applied to some buildings in a urban area in the southward part of Rome (Italy). The model, originally proposed by Finno et al. (2005), considers each building as an equivalent laminated beam, where the layers represent the floors and the core material reproduces the infill walls. This model is a compromise between the purely empirical methods that ignore many of the properties of the building, and the detailed finite element analyses that are time and computationally very expensive. The results obtained with the chosen model have been compared with the observable damages and the results are in substantial accordance.