A method for monitoring three dimensional surface deformation in mining areas combining SBAS-InSAR, GNSS and probability integral method

In the process of mineral resource extraction, monitoring surface deformation is crucial for ensuring the safety of engineering and ground infrastructure. Monitoring complete three-dimensional surface deformation is particularly significant. Traditional synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology provides deformation components only along the line of sight (LOS) and often lacks sufficient effective data in vegetation-covered mining areas and mining subsidence centers. To address this, this study proposes a method (SBAS-PIM) that combines SBAS-InSAR with the probabilistic integral method (PIM). This method leverages high-coherence points in mining areas and GNSS data from vegetation-covered regions to invert the parameters required by PIM, thus obtaining three-dimensional surface deformation results. The proposed method allows for the acquisition of three-dimensional deformation data with fewer InSAR points and GNSS data, significantly reducing labor costs and addressing the gap in InSAR monitoring of three-dimensional surface deformation in densely vegetated areas. Additionally, it accounts for the mutual influence of multiple adjacent working faces. Finally, through the application to a mining area in Heze, China, the maximum displacements in the vertical, east–west, and north–south directions were obtained as −2011, −418, and − 281 mm, respectively. The correlation coefficients between the vertical and east–west directions and GNSS data were both greater than or equal to 0.9, indicating that this method can effectively monitor the three-dimensional surface deformation of the mining area.