BGR Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe

Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources Hanover, December14th, 2016
- B4.4 – Remote Sensing - Dr. Michaela Frei

Resume European User Workshop

Supra-National Ground Motion Service

held at BGR (Federal Institute for Geoscience and Natural resources) in Hanover November 2nd and
3rd, 2016.
The European User Workshop addressed discussions about cross-border cooperation in Europe to
establish a Supra-National Ground Motion Service within the Copernicus Programme. Eighty
colleagues from 16 countries discussed in a two days meeting the need for – and relevance and
feasibility of – a Copernicus Sentinel 1 based ground motion service for Europe. Participants recruited
from e.g. Ministries, Geological Surveys, Geodetic Surveys, Mining authorities, Space Agencies, EU-
COM, Industry and Research groups.
The idea of a Supra-national Ground motion service had already been discussed previously on
different platforms, recently EU Commission level, the EU Copernicus User Forum, and at national
level in different countries.

The main objectives of the workshop were oriented towards the confirmation of interest for a Supra
National Ground Motion Service, identification of the user requirements and further line of actions.
The number of participants and presentations clearly proved the general interest regarding a Supra
National Ground Motion Service. Presentations and discussions identified first directions of user
requirements and proposed next steps.

The president of BGR Prof. Dr. Ralph Watzel addressed the main objectives of the workshop in his
opening remarks. Dr. Jörn Hoffmann of the German Aerospace Center- Space Administration
presented the welcome address of the German Copernicus representative of the German Federal
Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.
The introduction summed up the German national activities to implement a ground motion service
for Germany. Keynotes presented the agenda of the EU Commission in respect to a Copernicus
ground motion service, ESA’s Sentinel 1 mission planning long-term strategy and data availability, the
German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy summarized the economic value chain for
the National Copernicus Ground Motion Service. The German Aerospace Centre- Space
Administration emphasized the international context of a Copernicus Ground motion service.
Ten presentations highlighted the national activities in the context of ground motion
products/services based on SAR data. The presentations addressed different geologic processes
causing ground deformations and remote sensing methods (e.g. Persistent Scatterer Interferometry,
Small-Baseline time-series analysis) as well as local, regional, and supra-regional aspects, followed by
extensive discussions.
The national Earth observation activities in respect to Copernicus data use and the EOEG-EGS (Earth
Observation and Geohazard Expert Group- EuroGeoSurveys) activities regarding European databases
development began the second day of the workshop. The status and products on European and
German National level of the Copernicus Land monitoring service were explained. An important
backbone for the German ground motion service is the calibration of the remote sensing results with
the geodetic reference network (GREF). The characteristics of the infrastructures GREF and EPN
(European permanent network) with regard to a Supra National Ground Motion service were
illuminated. The presentations commenced with the methodological challenges from the European
project Terrafirma in respect to Wide Area PSI processing.

The Plenary discussion was guided towards the collection of requirements and expected added-value
of a potential supra-national ground motion service.
The main aspects, comments and suggestions raised during the workshop are summarized as follows:
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BGR Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe
Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources Hanover, December14th, 2016
- B4.4 – Remote Sensing - Dr. Michaela Frei

A variety of national activities with different strategies were shown during the presentations, these
strategies need to be discussed and adapted for a Pan- EU level concept.
Overview of the central questions and discussions raised during the European User workshop:
- What are the opportunities of a SNGMS regarding geohazard assessment/mitigation?
- What are the requirements (observation time span, spatial extent of typical aoi`s)?
- What are suitable cross-border pilot areas?
- What final products are of highest interest?
- Which processes should be monitored? Several processes were shown by the presenters,
e.g. tectonics, landslides, (abandoned) mining, salt dome mobility. Many countries are
interested in monitoring similar processes with slightly different InSAR approaches. Is there
an optimal InSAR approach to answer the national requirements?
- A wide range of temporal scales are characteristic for different processes.
Do we want to process Sentinel-1 Ascending/Descending every 6 days for all of Europe?
E.g., for Norway a demand for a frequent updates exists due to the requirements for
landslide observation. For other areas, an update every 6 months might be sufficient. After
creating a first European dataset, the update interval could be region-specific.
- Do we need a SNGMS if we already have national ground motion services? And if we have
identified a demand for a SNGMS, where is the border between public and commercial
data/products/services?
While an SNGMS could help creating a market for InSAR-based products/services, it may
also be viewed as competition by some commercial providers. Norway is planning to provide
the ground motion data full, free & open w.r.t. to the national users and the tax payer. The
stimulation of the applied (public & commercial) use of InSAR is another motivation for the
full, free & open data provision.
A high public investment was done for the Sentinels and the Copernicus ground segment, it
would be a pity if we do not use the full potential of the data for e.g. the development of
smart societies.
We should not produce a ground motion dataset with full spatial resolution, degrade it and
make the public potentially pay twice (for the full resolution). There will be plenty of room
for the industry with high resolution data, e.g. TerraSAR-X, COSMO-Skymed, Radarsat (in
combination/collaboration with Sentinel-1 data).
- Germany and Norway are very interested in the development of a Supra National Ground
Motion Service and want to collaborate/communicate with other nations to establish
ground motion services.

- The different communities (InSAR, GNSS) should work together to create a new data-
product.
- Data-/product standardization rules should be defined on a European level.
- These standards can also be of use for commercial entities.
We should not standardize processing, but products or product formats (like e.g. the GNSS
community has done).

- An intercomparison of InSAR processors should be established to reduce the differences in

the data-products on a long-term (like the GNSS community has done).
- Should there be a difference in InSAR processing between national and international ground
motion service?
How do we want to build a supra-national ground motion service (bottom-up, i.e. national
data-products send to a European organization, which does coordination/harmonization of
these dataset, or top-down, i.e. centralized creation of a basic product to be expanded on at
national levels)?

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BGR Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe
Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources Hanover, December14th, 2016
- B4.4 – Remote Sensing - Dr. Michaela Frei

- How do you want to make a link between InSAR based deformation field measurements and
already existing monitoring systems, e.g. EPOS?
- Integration of the different “nr. one users” (groundwater, landslides, mining, …).
- The obvious advantage of a Supra National Ground Motion Service are economies of scale.

Summary

The Workshop presentations demonstrated a broad need for ground motion and stability
information for different public tasks. In several European countries national ground motion services
are piloted, investigated, or considered. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission provides an
unprecedented opportunity for implementing operational ground motion services. The specific
technical requirements for such services depend on the geological processes of interest as well as
climatic conditions. Consequently, a supra national service would likely differ in terms of update-
frequencies, coverage, and possibly even methodological approaches for different regions in Europe.
Workshop participants were optimistic about the ability to define a useful European-level service,
that could then be elaborated further at national or regional levels by responsible public authorities
or commercial service providers. Representatives of companies providing InSAR-services stressed
that a supra-national service should be tendered based on objective quality-indicators to be
achieved. Also, it was generally understood that a public supra-national service would provide a
large-scale basic product, which could be tailored, enhanced and extended (more frequent updates,
additional sensors, …) commercially.
BGR invited participants to express their interest in participating in a “Task Force SNGMS” to develop
the technical specifications of such a service over the coming months. Based on the work of this Task
Force, the European Commission could then be invited to consider including ground-motion
information in the portfolio of one of the Copernicus Core Services from 2018 onwards.

The vision “Supra National Ground Motion Service” has been discussed and presented at different
national and EU levels. Commitment and assistance from governmental, industrial and scientific
end-users is mandatory to transfer this vision into an operational Copernicus Service. BGR initiated
this task by organizing the workshop and now intends to follow-up the discussions in a dedicated
Task Force SNGMS, to elaborate the concept for the Supra National Ground Motion Service.
The following questions should be addressed by the responsible representatives and the interested
end-users of a “Supra National Ground Motion Service”.

1. Please indicate your general interest in developing a “Supra-National Ground motion service”
by sending an email to BGR (Michaela.Frei@bgr.de).

2. We invite you to participate as an active member in the Task Force SNGMS concept. Please
indicate your availability to contributing to this effort in your email.