As well, an accurate survey of the area is being performed concurrently in order to validate the results. Ongoing and Future Applications Commercial change detection projects, such as those described herein will continue to be feasible, particularly where the ground cover is sparse and the climate dry. The oil and gas, and mining industries are prime potential operational users of the InSAR technology for change detection. ASI continues to work with commercial clients in these industries. However, under less than ideal ground cover and atmospheric conditions the conventional InSAR technique has in some projects clearly failed.
Heavy vegetation combined with a damp climate can adversely affect InSAR measurements.
Since landslides are often the result of creeping waterlogged, vegetated slopes it is not surprising that the conventional InSAR techniques fail. By constructing a time history of many measurements atmospheric effects can be filtered out and deformation rates can be determined at the permanent scatterer locations that can typically have a denser distribution than that for conventional land surveys. The EV-InSAR software has been modified to support this technique and it is currently being applied to a few projects involving landslide motion and subsidence movement along a fault. The commercialization of applying InSAR techniques for change detection is at a relatively early stage. There does exist a commercial market in the oil and gas, and mining industries and it is expected to grow as the industries understand when InSAR can be applied and are convinced of the validity of the results.