USING SENTINEL-1 TOPS SAR AND SBAS FOR LAND SUBSIDENCE

MONITORING IN HANOI, VIETNAM

Minh Nguyen, Chung-Pai Chang, Kuo-Hsin Tseng
Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University, Taiwan
nguyenminh@g.ncu.edu.tw, cpchang@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw, khtseng@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw
ABSTRACT: The rapid expansion of urban area has resulted in surface deformation in many countries. In the case of
Hanoi, Vietnam, ground subsidence is noted as one of major influences on urban growth and has endangered the
infrastructures such as historical places, buildings, and residential regions. The significant impacts of land subsidence
were recorded recently at a rate of few millimeters to centimeters per year, while the rate keeps increasing since past few
years as observed from remote sensing technologies. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) as one of the typical methods
for land subsidence measurement with high precision and large spatial coverage, is applied to continuously observe such
phenomenon in Hanoi. Even so, the limitations of data as well as high cost hamper the deployment and application of
SAR technique in earlier years. To catch up the new trend of Sentinel series for open data with high precision and temporal
resolution and overcome these limitations, the study intends to utilize Sentinel-1A TOPS SAR data to investigate the
deformation in Hanoi where suffers severe subsidence since last few decades. Also, Hanoi experienced an expansion of
3.6 times in 2008 along with deployment of first-10 years new urban planning. In our preliminary result, the Small
Baseline (SBAS) Interferometry SAR (InSAR) represents a large area subsiding with a rate up to 40 mm yr-1 in the period
from April 2016 to September 2017. Along with the extension of the city centre, subsided area also expanded in the scale
and new subsidence region were recorded with even higher rates. The valuable information of subsidence measurement
combining with geology analysis as well as other data could be used for next period of Hanoi urban planning. In addition,
the good agreement of SBAS result with recently published studies in Hanoi proves the capability of Sentinel-1 for
ground displacement observations and further applications in Vietnam.

KEYWORDS: Sentinel-1; SBAS; Land Subsidence; Hanoi

1. INTRODUCTION breakthrough in providing open remotely sensed data with

The work of estimating land subsidence in Hanoi,
Vietnam had started approximately 20 years ago. Many
studies have utilized the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
imagery since the city has rapidly developed along with
the expansion of centre area, which erased the boundary
between urban and rural regions. The complexity of
geological condition and a high demand of groundwater
for the growth of population have also resulted in surface
deformation in newly extended areas. These hazards were
recorded and motivated administrative and researchers to
conduct studies of ground displacement that supports
urban planning in the future. The differential SAR
Interferometry (DInSAR) was used at the beginning and
the technique is updated through the time with Persistent
Scatters InSAR (PSInSAR) or Small Baseline Subset
(SBAS) InSAR. New techniques can improve the
limitations of DInSAR and provide time series
observation. However, the satellite data in the past was
quite limited, and thus the information extracted for Hanoi
subsidence was intermittent since the first attempt of using
InSAR technology.
Thanks to the open data policy trending in many space
agencies in recent years, the new series of Sentinel
satellites launched by European Space Agency (ESA) in
2014, addressing such issue and moreover, they made a
high precision and temporal resolution. This study intends
to provide a timely land subsidence observation in Hanoi
using Sentinel-1A TOPS SAR data with SBAS technique,
that allows us to observe the deformation of the entire city
and scan any unexpected displacement along with its rate
in millimeters to centimeters level. The additional geology
data could illuminate partially the potential reasons
causing this phenomenon and furthermore, the study
shares a favorable information to construct the new
expansion area in future not only for Hanoi but also other
larger region.
2. METHOD AND DATA COLLECTION
Hanoi located in the northeastern of Vietnam (Fig. 1)
is a 70-years-old capital with an important role in the
country’s economy. It is the second largest city following
Ho Chi Minh City with it special foreign influence urban
type. The latitude and longitude boundary of Hanoi are
20.88°–21.38° and 105.73°–106.03°, respectively, with an
area of 3,358.9 km2 that hosts approximately 8 million
people. The city situated in the centre of Red river plain
and has over 1000 years of history with a mixing of
historical heritage, modern buildings, and residential
areas. In 2018, there are undergoing the first 10-year of
urban planning since the last expansion in 2008 with 3
times expanded in the scale. At the present, there is no
tectonic or fault in the study area, hence the deformation
mostly depends on human activity. Hanoi has distinct four
seasons annually and has complicated atmospheric
condition along with the geology. According to surface
geology, the area dominated by clay accounting for a high
rate in study region which means that the subsidence of
ground is likely to occur over these locations.
Figure 1. Location of study area: surface geology map of
extended urban area and old central area derived from
[1].
In Hanoi region, Sentinel-1A satellite provides
regular swath of C-band radar imageries in the
Interferometric Wide (IW) mode. The Terrain
Observation with Progressive Scans SAR (TOPSAR)
technique is used to provide vertical-vertical (VV)
polarization with a spatial resolution at approximately
520 m. This data was processed by one of the advanced
techniques namely the SBAS InSAR, which takes
advantage of the small distance between satellite
observation times to extract the displacement (i.e., Fig. 2).
There are 42 scenes used to generate 107 interferograms
and process with Generic Map Tool (GMT) – GMTSAR,
which is one of the newest package able to deal with
Sentinel-1 directly.
Figure 2. Baseline network of interferometric pairs. Lines
represents 107 interferograms and black dots represent
the timing and relative baseline between acquisitions.
3. RESULTS & DISCUSSION
Figure 3 denotes the Line of Sight (LOS)
displacement velocity of SBAS result derived from
Sentinel-1A imagery in the period from 3 April 2016 to 13
September 2017. In the central area, it can be seen that
there are 2 subsidence hotspots located at Hadong and
Hoangmai district. In fact, these two districts are recorded
as deteriorating displacement zones since 2007 [2]. With
a similar trend of surface deformation, this study
continuously observers these subsided regions where the
rate of Hadong is nearly 27 mm yr-1 in LOS displacement
and a less severe displacement of 18 mm yr-1 to Hoangmai
district. The good agreement of SBAS Sentinel-1A with
published studies [1,2] proves that our study result is
reliable and able to extend time series surrounding city
centre.
Figure 3. The LOS displacement velocity of Hanoi
derived by SBAS InSAR Sentinel-1A from April 2016 to
September 2017. Red boxes display 3 subsided areas:
Hoaiduc, Hadong, Hoangmai (from left to right).
The most interesting finding in our results is an
unreported subsiding area located near the northwestern
boundary of city center. This suburban area named
Hoaiduc experiences the highest rate at more than 40 mm
yr-1. This deformation had not been well-known in the past
and the position is in one of the new residential areas
adjacent to the main road, which connects the city to the
western supported areas. It is clear that all of the
subsidence bowls represent agricultural zone in the past
and mostly dominated by clay, which potentially causing
a compaction process. In addition, the rapid growth of
population also induces the sudden increase of
groundwater demanding since it has undergone the worst
situation in recent years. Over 1.5 year of observation, the
cumulative displacement as a result of continuous
subsiding, the highest displacement cumulatively reaches
approximately 90 mm. In case of no improvement, the
worse scenario could be endangering most the facility in
these new residential.
 4. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we present the LOS displacement of
SBAS InSAR from Sentinel-1A imageries to observe the
surface deformation in Hanoi, Vietnam. There are 2
subsidence bowls continuously measuring the rate of
displacement at 18 to 27 mm yr-1. The displacement
velocity of SBAS found a new declining region whose rate
is estimated to more than 40 mm yr-1. The geology factor
accompany with excessive groundwater extraction could
be the reason inducing this phenomenon.
The good agreement of Sentinel-1A data processed
by SBAS with published studies performs the successful
of study in observing the land subsidence in Hanoi and
high capability of further applications in Vietnam and
provide valuable information for urban planning. Based
on current results, there is a numerous analysis could be
provided to extract further information and it is worth to
keep monitoring this region with current workflow.

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