Application of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) Technique in Monitoring the Deformation of Large Oil Storage Tanks

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach for monitoring the deformation of large oil storage tanks using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique.The aim is to proffer a solution that tackles the challenge of oil spillage due to failure of oil storage tanks.Failure of large oil storage tanks could be fatal leading to loss of lives and property, pollution of aquatic lives, lawsuits amongst others.Periodic monitoring of these engineering structures is necessary to ascertain the health of these structures and to detect if there are any significant displacements from their insitu design.The study area is Forcados, Warri, Delta State, Nigeria.Satellite images used were acquired from the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite hub between March 2016 and March 2017.Small Baseline Subset Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SBAS-DInSAR) technique was combined with an Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) procedure to detect and validate deformation measurements on a crude oil storage tank.We illustrate the validation analysis using one (tank 7), out of ten tanks within the study area.The results show that the horizontal distortions of the circular cross-section of tank 7 is within a range of -3.131mm and -29.669mm.Our effort proffers a practical and economic solution to a major challenge of engineering geodesy and most important petroleum provinces in the world.