Milillo's Lab

Milillo's Lab

Infrastructure and structural health

Millimetre-scale movement of bridges, dams and buildings, measured from orbit.

The problem

Structures fail slowly before they fail suddenly. The deformation that precedes failure is often a few millimetres per year, distributed across a structure rather than concentrated at one instrumented point. Ground instrumentation measures that well but only where it has been installed, and it is rarely installed before anyone suspects a problem.

SAR satellite line of sight Structure displacement, mmtime
Radar measures the component of motion along its own line of sight, across the whole structure at once, from archives acquired before anyone was looking.

How we measure it

Interferometric radar measures displacement along the satellite line of sight across the whole structure at once, from archives that already exist. That makes retrospective analysis possible: the measurement can be made after the event, from data acquired before it.

What we have found

Morandi Bridge, Genoa

Space geodetic observations recorded deformation on the bridge in the years before its 2018 collapse.

Mosul Dam, Iraq

Long-term interferometric survey confirms ongoing destabilization of the dam.

Tunnelling settlement

InSAR monitoring data evaluated against field measurements for post-tunnelling building damage assessment.

Papers on this theme 36

Showing the 12 most relevant of 36. See all 92 publications.

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