Multi-temporal assessment of building damage on a landslide-affected area by interferometric data

Slow-moving landslides are widespread in different geological settings all over the world and they often are cause of significant damage to existing man-made structures. For such reason, a considerable interest towards innovative approaches useful to provide information on their evolution and on the interaction with existing buildings has grown among the scientific community and land management institutions. To this purpose, the combined use of C-band satellites and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar sensors, has been successfully applied in several analyses aimed at the detection of spatial and temporal effects, in term of building's damage induced by landslides. This work provides a general approach useful to investigate, at different levels of detail, the cause-effect relationship. The proposed methodology has been applied to the urban settlement of Moio della Civitella (Salerno province, Italy), whose whole territory is affected by several slow-moving landslides. C and X-band SAR data (acquired between 2002 and 2014), integrated with field survey of structural damage, enhanced an accurate examination of landslide effects on the urban texture of Moio della Civitella. The results allowed to generate empirical fragility curves for buildings on the study area. These curves can be used as a tool to forecast the future likelihood of the damage occurrence. Finally, the behavior of a masonry building aggregate has been assessed analyzing Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) time-series pre- and post-repair intervention, thus providing information also about the efficacy of restoration works.