Qatar Ground Motion Service

InSAR-based ground motion monitoring system

QGMS is an operational, country-scale InSAR monitoring platform for Qatar that transforms Sentinel-1 SAR acquisitions into decision-ready deformation intelligence for infrastructure risk management.

DOI

Project Snapshot

Funding Agency: Qatar Ministry of Municipality
Period: 2024-2025
My role: Scientific and technical leadership for operational InSAR analytics, platform delivery, and stakeholder-facing implementation.

What This System Delivers

  • Continuous Sentinel-1 InSAR processing for ascending and descending tracks.
  • Millimeter-scale motion detection for subsidence, uplift, and lateral displacement.
  • Building- and asset-scale deformation screening for roads, utilities, and urban infrastructure.
  • Interactive maps, trend charts, and alert-ready layers for operational monitoring.
  • Technical transfer and training support for long-term in-country adoption.

Why It Matters

QGMS supports proactive infrastructure stewardship by identifying early deformation signals before they escalate into costly failures. The platform helps convert high-volume EO data into practical, repeatable workflows for engineering and municipal decision-making.

Sentinel-1 collects repeat-pass SAR data over Qatar in both ascending and descending orbits, enabling full deformation coverage.
A sample view from the web application.

QGMS continues to evolve through iterative analytics upgrades and stakeholder collaboration, with emphasis on reliability, interpretability, and operational utility.

References

  1. Emil, M. K., Sultan, M., Alakhras, K., Sataer, G., Gozi, S., Al-Marri, M., and Gebremichael, E. (2021). Countrywide Monitoring of Ground Deformation Using InSAR Time Series: A Case Study from Qatar. Remote Sensing, 13(4), 702. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040702
  2. Emil, M. K. (2025). Qatar-Ground-Motion-Service: A web application for Qatar Ground Motion Service (v0.0.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17703685