Inverse Modeling of 3D High Resolution Ground Deformation Maps Derived by Integrating GPS and DInSAR Data

In this paper we present a strategy aimed to modeling large data set of 3D complex ground deformation patterns obtained by integrating sparse Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements of deformations and Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) maps of movements of the Earth´s surface. The method used to integrate these two kinds of data to derive 3D ground deformation map, was the SISTEM (Simultaneous and Integrated Strain Tensor Estimation from geodetic and satellite deformation Measurements) one. In order to find the optimal model a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is first used to locate optimal regions of complex search spaces. Then a derivative-based method, in particular the Gauss-Newton one, is used to refine results. The proposed strategy was tested on both synthetic and real datasets, the latter relevant to the Abruzzo region during the 2009 earthquake.