Satellite SAR Interferometry and On-Site Traditional SHM to Monitor the Post-Earthquake Behavior of the Civic Tower in L’Aquila (Abruzzo Region, Italy)

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) represents a very powerful tool to assess the health condition of buildings. In recent years, growing availability high-resolution SAR satellite images has made possible application multi-temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (MT-InSAR) techniques for structural monitoring purposes, with high precision, low costs, timesaving, and possibility investigate wide areas. However, comprehensive validation effectiveness MT-InSAR in this field not been achieved yet. For reason, paper comparison between interferometric data on-site measurement displacements is proposed. The case study Civic Tower city L’Aquila (Abruzzo Region, Italy). After seismic events that affected area 2009, an system was installed on tower detect any changes damage pattern period 2010–2013. Furthermore, acquired by COSMO-SkyMed constellation Stripmap mode (~3 m resolution) during same were processed Permanent Scatterer-InSAR (PSI) technique estimate deformation structure surrounding area. obtained results indicate both methods are consistent displacement trends building slight rotation/displacement detected. Such evidence highlights huge potential limitations using InSAR SHM.