Quantification and incorporation of spatially correlated InSAR errors

Quantify and incorporate spatial dependencies among neighboring persistent-scatterer displacement observations caused by residual atmospheric phase effects and localized structural deformation gradients, to avoid underestimating uncertainty in the independent Gaussian model.

Background

The framework models persistent-scatterer line-of-sight displacements within a uniform motion region as independent Gaussian observations. The paper notes that residual atmospheric phase and localized deformation gradients may create spatial correlations among neighboring persistent scatterers, which are not represented in the current assumption and could cause uncertainty to be underestimated. Quantifying and incorporating these dependencies is therefore left unresolved.

References

Potential spatially correlated errors, such as residual atmospheric phase in InSAR measurements and failure mechanisms involving local structural deformation gradients, may introduce dependencies among neighbouring PS points. These effects are not explicitly considered in the current independent Gaussian assumption and may result in an underestimation of the uncertainty. Further investigation is required to quantify and incorporate such dependencies.

— Warning of infrastructure deformation anomaly through probabilistic analysis of InSAR observations  (2610.13552 - Kuai et al., 9 Oct 2026) in Appendix B, “Empirical evaluation of the Gaussian assumption for LOS displacements”