Satellite (space) monitoring of civil infrastructure

Summary

Civil infrastructure requires regular inspection and monitoring to ensure it’s working in a safe and reliable manner. This is true for nearly all civil infrastructure, including buildings, bridges, highways, railways, dams, slopes…etc. However, the physical inspection and monitoring of civil infrastructure can be expensive, time consuming and have repeatability issues. As a solution, satellite technology is a new and promising future tool for the remote monitoring of such infrastructure. The advantages are that satellite data can be accessed instantly, without the need to setup in-situ sensors. Further, the data has good repeatability, is freely available and historical data can be easily accessed thus allowing investigation of past events.

Regarding applications for civil infrastructure, a large number of satellites are in the earth’s orbit, each monitoring the earth in a different manner. For example, satellites operating using visible light wavelengths record pictures of the earth’s surface, while others (InSAR) use radar signals to record positional information of the earth’s surface. Further, depending upon the wavelength of energy used, some satellites are able to penetrate the earth’s surface to varying depth. Using either individual satellites or a combinations of satellites, some example applications are:

Bridges: Monitoring the subsidence of support piers and bridge decks
Earthworks: Monitoring soil moisture content and geotechnical subsidence
Railways: Monitoring track subsidence on a network scale
Water: Monitoring underground water/pipe leaks
Highways: Monitoring subsidence of the road structure
Sea-defences and coastal areas: Subsidence and susceptibility to sea-level rise
Buildings: Subsidence vulnerability assessment

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