Subsidence revealed by PSI technique in the Jakarta City, Indonesia

Subsidence in urban area has the potential to cause severe damage to ecosystems as well as economic loss. Therefore it is important to understand the subsidence phenomenon in urban area. The objective of this study is to investigate the terrain deformation in the metropolitan area of Jakarta, Indonesia using multiple satellite radar imagery. In this study the GEOS-PSI, a software developed at UNSW for persistent scatterer radar interferometry, was used to map the land subsidence in Jakarta region with L-band ALOS PALSAR radar images. A total of 17 ALOS PALSAR images acquired from 31 January 2007 to 26 September 2010 over Jakarta were used in this study. The results demonstrated that the land in the area of Jakarta was deforming at different rates. Several subsidence bowls with peak displacement rates over -150 mm/yr along the radar looking direction have been observed at the northern Jakarta.