Preliminary risk assessment of metro lines subjected to adjacent disturbance with time-series InSAR

Abstract

The urban metro system is a crucial infrastructure for sustainable urban development. However, ground engineering disturbances, such as foundation pit excavations and overloading, can cause damage to the metro structure, including cracks and water leakage. By integrating small baseline subset synthetic aperture radar interferometry (SBAS-InSAR) technology, this study develops a preliminary risk assessment methodology for metro lines that are subjected to ground engineering disturbances. A relevant case from Changsha was proposed, spanning from January 2017 to July 2023, using a dataset of 147 Sentinel satellite images. Key findings include: (1) InSAR technology effectively monitors ground settlement, the areas with significant construction activities, the average annual settlement rate typically exceeds −6 mm/yr, with some regions reaching up to −10 mm/yr. In contrast, most areas without ground disturbance usually experience surface settlement not exceeding −2 mm/yr. (2) Satellite imagery analysis of metro areas with settlement differences greater than 20 mm revealed that most of these regions are influenced by foundation pit excavation, and some regions may be influenced by soil consolidation. (3) Overall, metro lines in Changsha have a low risk level, with certain areas classified as “high risk”. In the high-risk sections, Line 2 and Line 6 account for 32.7% and 20%, respectively, and regular inspections are required. This study would be beneficial to sustainable urban transportation.

Keywords

Surface settlement / Metro area / Risk assessment / SBAS-InSAR / Settlement velocity

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Zhiwen Xu: Writing - original draft, Validation, Software, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Suhua Zhou: Writing - original draft, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Qingshan Zhang: Software, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Jiuchang Zhang: Resources, Methodology, Conceptualization. Chuting Huang: Visualization, Software, Resources, Data curation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

The work presented in this paper was financially supported by the Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province (CX20240432), the Key Laboratory of Geological Safety of Coastal Urban Underground Space, Ministry of Natural Resources (BHKF2023Y04), the Natural Science Foundation of Changsha (Grant Nos. kq2208031 and kq2402072), and the Natural Resources Science and Technology Project of Fujian Province (KY-070000-04-2021-025).

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