Participants in this course will develop the following skills:

• Intuitive understanding of SAR image and phase information
• Understanding the properties of different SAR sensor types
• Ability to pick the optimal sensor for your application
• Creation of RGB color visualizations from images acquired at different times or in different polarizations
• Use of SAR images to map hazards such as flooding and deforestation
• Use of interferometric SAR techniques to measure cm-scale surface deformation related to volcanic activity and landslides

Week 1: Course Introduction and Basic Capabilities of SAR & InSAR

Week 1 will introduce you to the main content and structure of this course. You will also learn about the lab environment that will be available for learners on the “verified track”. The following items will be addressed:

• Introduction to course
• Presentation of course syllabus
• Basic principles and capabilities of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging
• Concepts of Interferometric SAR processing and its applications to disaster monitoring
• Verified Track: Lab exercise on exploring SAR time series for flooding events
• Verified Track: Lab exercise analyzing and interpreting InSAR products

Week 2: InSAR Time Series Analysis Techniques

InSAR time series analysis techniques enable the tracking of cm-scale surface displacements over long times. These techniques are relevant for a number of hazard applications such as landslide and volcano monitoring. In Week 2 we will address:

• The Concept of InSAR Time Series Analysis
• Point Target-Based InSAR Time Series Analysis
• Distributed Scatterer InSAR Time Series Analysis
• Verified Track: Lab exercise exploring PSI time series data over Norway

Week 3: Disaster Monitoring using SAR Image Data

SAR sensors are highly stable imaging systems that are ideal for the identification of changes on the earth surface. Week 3 will introduce participants to a range of techniques to monitor hazard events and identify changes from multi-temporal SAR images.

• Surface water signatures in SAR
• A Threshold-based surface water mapping method
• Verified Track: Hands-on flood mapping using Jupyter Notebooks
• SAR change detection techniques
• Verified Track: Lab exercise on time series change detection to map deforestation

Week 4: Disaster Monitoring using InSAR Techniques

In this part of the course, we will apply the information learned in Week 4 to monitor surface displacements at volcanoes and in landslide-prone areas. Specifically, Week 6 will address the following items:

• Review of InSAR workflow for a geophysical application
• Estimating volcano source model parameters from InSAR
• Verified Track: Lab exercise estimating Mogi source parameters for Okmok volcano, Alaska
• Landslides monitoring using SBAS InSAR
• Verified Track: Lab exercise mapping landslide motion in California using InSAR time series data

"It was a great course! I recommend it for both beginners and familiarized professionals with radar remote sensing."

– Gilberto Daniel Hermosillo Camacho, Specialist in Geotechnologies, Mexico

"Great hands-on activities and explanations! A great refresher course for those familiar with SAR, and helps with knowledge enhancement! Yet it's an approachable course even for beginners in SAR too."

– Sidharth Subramaniam, GIS Associate, Kawa Space, India

Glad to complete this SAR course offered via edX. It helps me to better interface with our satellite team when monitoring construction induced ground/building deformation, as well as broaden my horizons about SAR applications outside my expertise.

– Zhangwei Ning, PhD, Technical Manager at SIXENSE Inc