Digital Environment: Dynamic Ground Motion Map of the UK

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The ground surface in the UK is far from stable. For example, there are more that 15,000 recorded landslides in the UK, and the average annual cost of ground movement to the insurance industry is £250M. Landslides affecting critical infrastructure, such as mainline railways or dams, can be associated with multi-million pound remediation costs even for a single slope failure event. Furthermore, there are tens of thousands of kilometres of engineered slopes in our transportation, utilities and flood defence infrastructure networks - many of which were built in Victorian times and are in poor condition. Satellite technology, specifically ESA's Sentinel-1 constellation, has the potential to produce a dynamic, high resolution map of ground motion which can be used for monitoring and planning. The proposed feasibility study will explore whether UK expertise can be used to integrate Sentinel-1 data with sensors on the ground and embedded in the built environment to contribute to the Digital Environment. The study will leverage existing RCUK investments, map the requirements of potential stakeholders and explore cutting edge approaches to data handling, analysis, fusion and decision making. In addition to the core of InSAR experts, our team comprises a) specialists in image processing and machine learning, b) specialists in landslides, subsidence and onshore energy production and c) two knowledge exchange fellows. A wide-ranging network of potential stakeholders has already been identified, and our selected project partners (Environment Agency, Network Rail, TerraDat, Bridgeway Consulting) represent the needs of key governmental and commercial beneficiaries. The output of the feasibility study will be a peer-reviewed white paper detailing the requirements for a Sentinel-1 based UK ground motion map to be incorporated into a Digital Environment.