Validation and comparison of Advanced Differential Interferometry Techniques: Murcia metropolitan area case study

This paper is focused on the analysis of the performance of Stable Point Network (SPN) and Coherent Pixel Technique (CPT), which are Advanced Differential Interferometry Techniques (A-DInSAR) that estimate, among other results, mean deformation velocity maps of the ground surface and displacement time series from a SAR dataset. The test site is the metropolitan area of the city of Murcia (Spain) where a moderate slow subsidence induced by the overexploitation of aquifers is present. SAR data acquired between July 1995 and August 2005 from ERS and ENVISAT sensors have been processed by the SPN and CPT techniques and compared with in situ instrumental measurements assumed as reference. Experimental results have shown that both SPN and CPT techniques provide estimates of the deformation evolution in time with an absolute difference below 6 mm consistently in all comparisons: SPN vs extensometer, CPT vs extensometer and SPN vs CPT. The proposed validation and comparison experiment between both A-DInSAR techniques has been useful to observe their differences and complementarities.