4D surface kinematics monitoring through terrestrial radar interferometry and image cross-correlation coupling

Complex gravitational phenomena can require terrestrial remote sensing solutions for monitoring their possibleevolution, especially when in situ installations are not possible. This study merges terrestrial radar inter-ferometry (TRI) and image cross-correlation (ICC) processing, which can detect complementary motion com-ponents, to obtain a 3-dimensional system able to measure the actual surface motionfield of a pre-defined target.The coupling can be carried out on data acquired from different installations of the devices, and by applyingspecific transformations of the related coordinate systems. The data georeferencing is a critical issue that affectsthe correct spatial correspondence of the data and a new approach for georeferencing radar data is proposed. Theresult is a spatio-temporal (3 + 1-dimensional) high-resolution representation of the surface kinematics. Thepresented method has been tested for the measurement of the Planpicieux glacier surface kinematics (NW ofItaly). The error analysis revealed a millimeter accuracy and precision of the measurement and a georeferencinguncertainty of a few metres.