Duration: 12 months
Large infrastructures need continuous maintenance because of materials degradation due to atmospheric agents and their persistent use. This problem makes it imperative to carry out persistent monitoring of infrastructure health conditions in order to guarantee maximum safety at all times. The main issue of early warning infrastructure fault detection is that expensive in-situ distributed monitoring sensor networks have to be installed. On the contrary, the use of satellite data has made it possible to use immediate and low-cost techniques in recent years. In this regard, the potential of spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar for the monitoring of critical infrastructures is demonstrated in geographically extended areas, even in the presence of clouds, and in really tough weather. Preliminary studies [12] demonstrated that vibrational information of infrastructures, such as bridges, can be obtained from single pass SAR images via the analysis of the micro-motions modes of the structure. In this project this capability will be validated with ground truth in-situ measurements, aimed at confirming the capability to detect effectively vibrational modes of bridges, as well as supporting the derivation of a calibration model. In addition, the applicability of the processing framework, or sub-optimal version of it, for on-board deployment on constellations aimed at providing condition monitoring/early warning commercial products will be assessed.
