Accuracy evaluation of PSI method using Sentinel-1A data to monitor open-pit mines instability, case study, Anguran open-pit mine

Landslides are one of the disasters and geohazards which cause economical losses and casualties annually worldwide. By the growth of population and urban development toward foothills, slope monitoring and landslide detection become essential. These actions could be done by advanced technologies such as satellites and processing of their products by related applications and packages. Also excavating large open-pit mines to extract metal and minerals, leads to instability of the terrains which makes risk of landslide an inevitable part of mining.Studying the features of slope is one of the best techniques to avoid landslides and slope instability. First step of landslide is detection which remote sensing is one of the best ways to detect and monitor slops. Low cost and large area coverage makes this most efficient technique for monitoring and landslide detection. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is one of the sensors that is utilized to detect land movement by sending and receiving electromagnetic signals.In this research to detect slope movements on Anguran lead open-pit mine walls, free Sentinel-1A SAR images provided by European Space Agency (ESA) were processed by open source software, SNAP and StaMPS. Displacements obtained from satellite data, were compared with displacements measured by survey, precipitation data and geological properties and features to figure out the major factors affecting the stability of slope. Generally, results demonstrate using of Sentinel-1A SARdata are acceptable for overall detections and displacements measuring, however for better results in active open-pit mines, sensitive radar sensors and commercial software are recommended.