Ground motion in Jakarta

Following the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in September 2018, ESA and the Asian Development Bank have been helping the authorities better understand the hazards associated with seismic activity, flooding and landslides through the use of satellite data. The project included a week-long training course in Jakarta, which explored services from ESA’s Geohazards Exploitation Platform. Ground displacement rate maps of Jakarta that use information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, as shown here, were used in the course. In this case displacement is largely a result of groundwater extraction. Values correspond to line-of-sight velocities. Local displacement patterns reach about 12 cm/year. The inset zooms-in over Jakarta’s harbour and is overlaid by displacement rates higher than 1.5 cm/year.

Read full story: Using satellite information to help rebuild after a disaster