On the joint exploitation of long-term DInSAR time series and geological information for the investigation of ground settlements in the town of Roma (Italy)

In this work the long-term DInSAR deformation time series have been jointly exploited with the geological information and the structural characteristics of the buildings, in order to study the interactions between the soils and the man-made structures and to investigate the response of different buildings to the settlements. The presented analysis has been carried out by applying the advanced multi-temporal DInSAR technique referred to as Small BAseline Subset (SBAS) approach to an ERS/ENVISAT SAR dataset, collected over the town of Roma (Italy) in the 1992-2010 time interval. Our study has been performed first at the large spatial scale, and then at the local scale, focusing on some buildings located within the city centre on the eastern side of the Tevere River. The obtained SBAS-DInSAR measurements, analysed in light of the geological setting and the spatial distribution of the settlements, indicate that the observed displacements are mainly linked to a residual consolidation process, correlated with the urbanization and hydrometric level of the Tevere River. The local variation in the deformation rates can be related to the intrinsic variability of the soils filling the alluvial valley and to time since loading application.