Construction & Tunnelling

Dating structural movement against an adjacent excavation

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

A structure beside an active excavation was moving. Seventeen months of satellite measurement established when the movement began.

A parking structure adjacent to an active excavation on reclaimed coastal land showed signs of deformation. The question was not whether it was moving but when it started — the answer determines whether the excavation is responsible.

Sentinel-1 acquisitions from November 2024 to April 2026 were processed from both orbits: 24 ascending and 23 descending scenes, yielding roughly 13,100 and 13,900 persistent scatterers across the marina area, with line-of-sight velocities from −17 to +4 mm/year. Two-geometry decomposition resolved vertical and east–west components.

The time-series placed the onset of measurable deformation at a specific point in the record, against which the excavation works programme could be compared. That is evidence of a kind that is very difficult to reconstruct after the fact by any other means.