Ground deformation associated with the 2012 Emilia (Northern Italy) seismic crisis retrieved through spaceborne SAR interferometry

In this work we present a detailed analysis of the co-seismic deformation signals associated with the 2012 Emilia (Northern Italy) seismic crises through spaceborne Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry. In particular, we provide a general picture of the ground deformation fields relevant to the Ml 5.9 and Ml 5.8 main shocks, by generating four co-seismic displacement maps from X-band COSMO-SkyMed and C-band RADARSAT-1/2 SAR data, collected by descending orbits over the investigated area. Subsequently, we perform an analytical modelling of the seismic events by exploiting the RADARSAT-2 displacement map through a finite dislocation fault, in order to get more information about the earthquake source locations and their geometries. © 2013 IEEE.