Reconstruction of spatially continuous time-series land subsidence based on PS-InSAR and improved MLS-SVR in Beijing Plain area

ABSTRACT

Beijing has undergone severe settlement in recent years. Persistent Scatterers Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PS-InSAR) technique has been widely used to derive time-series land deformation. However, existing studies have faced two challenges: (1) the nonlinear characteristics of time-series subsidence has not been fully investigated; (2) since PS points are normally distributed in urban areas with high building density, measurement gaps usually exist in nonurban areas. To address the challenges, we presented a new method to reconstruct spatially continuous time-series deformation. First, PS-InSAR was used to retrieve the deformation based on 135 scenes of Envisat ASAR and Radarsat-2 images from 2003 to 2020. Polynomial Curve Fitting (PCF) was then used to model nonlinear time-series deformation for the PS points. In the PS measurement gaps, Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique (ISODATA) and Multi-output Least Squares Support Vector Regression (MLS-SVR) were used to estimate the PCF coefficients and then time-series deformation considering 40 features including thickness of the compressible layers, annual groundwater level, etc. The major results showed that (1) compared to linear, quadratic, and quartic models, cubic polynomial model generated better fit for the time-series deformation (R² ≈0.99), suggesting obvious nonlinear temporal pattern of deformation; (2) the time-series deformation over measurement gaps reconstructed by ISODATA and MLS-SVR had satisfactory accuracy (R² = 0.92, MAPE < 15%) and yielded higher accuracy (R² = 0.947) than IDW (R² = 0.687) and Ordinary Kriging (R² = 0.688) interpolation methods. The reconstructed results maintain the nonlinear characteristics and ensure the high spatial resolution (120 m) of time-series deformation. Among the 40 predictor variables, ground water level datasets are the most influential predictors of time-series deformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Land subsidence
• PS-InSAR
• multi-output support vector regression
• nonlinear deformation
• time series
• spatial interpolation

Acknowledgments

The work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42271487, 42071396, 41930109), Beijing Science and Technology Plan (Grant No. Z201100006720001), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 5172002), and Beijing Outstanding Young Scientist Program (Grant No. BJJWZYJH01201910028032).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Upon reasonable request, the corresponding author, Professor Xiaojuan Li, Ph.D., can provide the data that support study’s conclusions.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15481603.2023.2230689.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42271487]; Beijing Outstanding Young Scientist Program [BJJWZYJH01201910028032]; Beijing Science and Technology Plan [Z201100006720001]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [41930109]; Beijing Natural Science Foundation [5172002]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [42071396]