Andreas Piter, Mahmud Haghshenas Haghighi and Mahdi Motagh from IPI have contributed to a ground-breaking study revealing structural instability of high-rise buildings on Miami’s barrier islands in Florida. Using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology, the researchers found that a total of 35 coastal buildings, including prominent luxury properties such as Trump International and Trump Tower III are sinking at an unexpected rate. Up to 8 cm of settlements between 2016 and 2023 has been documented for some coastal buildings from Sunny Isles Beach to Miami Beach in South Florida. The study, which was conducted as an international cooperation between IPI and several leading research institutions and universities in the US was published open access in the journal Earth and Space Science.
The main outcome from this research work is based on the analysis done using SARvey (Survey with SAR), a new open-source python-based InSAR software developed at IPI as part of Andreas Piter’s PhD project. “SARvey utilizes state-of-the-art methodologies in analyzing time-series of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to extract information about stability of critical infrastructures like buildings, dams, transport network, etc...” said Dr. Mahmud Haghshenas Haghighi from IPI who was involved in this study.
“The new research software developed by Andreas Piter is a game changer in our community for further exploiting the application of InSAR technology for different civil engineering applications and geotechnical monitoring” said Prof. Mahdi Motagh from IPI, co-author of this paper. This new technological development at IPI allows civil protection authorities and engineers to easily use freely-available satellite data to evaluate infrastructure stability and protect communities in nearby regions from their risk of failure.
Link to the paper https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EA003852
Some media release:
Link to Miami Herald https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article296831519.html
Link to Latin Times: https://www.latintimes.com/miami-high-rises-sinking-trump-hotels-among-35-buildings-subsiding-unexpected-rates-study-finds-569236
