Applications of new technologies of ground-based interferometric radar to the study of Cultural Heritage buildings

Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry is a technique that, by making the phase difference of SAR image pairs, allows to extract the information relevant to the earth surface displacements. The result of the phase difference, referred to as Interferometric Phase or Interferogram, contains different terms: the deformation phase term, a topographic phase contribution, an atmospheric phase term and the noise contibution. Applying an algorithm referred to as Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) proposed by I.R.E.A. - C.N.R. it is possible to know the displacement of buildings and constructed parts (roads, bridges ecc.) which have a dimension of about 10 meters The results demonstrate that the DInSAR technique is a fast and precise method to detect and follow the temporal evolution of deformations, so it is a powerful technique for monitoring the territory and to map its vulnerability.