TRE has proven to be the first company world-wide providing co-seismic,  X-band derived interferograms of the earthquake, that hit Haiti on the 12th of January 2010, causing more than 150,000 victims.

It is the result of an effective collaboration between TRE and Infoterra GmbH (www.infoterra.de), which in a very short time supplied images acquired by the Terra SAR-X satellite over Haiti.

The two interferograms have been created using two images acquired before the earthquake and the only one available after the earthquake. Unfortunately, the quality of results is affected by the presence of tropical vegetation covering most of the island: the coherence is low and the interferograms are quite noisy. However, both interferograms show a phase discontinuity that corresponds to an East-West seismic fault, in compliance with the local geology. The images below have a color cycle, from blue to red, corresponding to a 16 mm-displacement of earth surface as measured along the satellite’s line of sight.



Figure 1: First interferogram over Haiti. The two compared images were acquired on 14/01/2010 and 18/02/2009 respectively.



Figure 2: Second interferogram over Haiti. The two compared images were acquired on 14/01/2010 and 15/09/2009 respectively.

TRE will continue its research efforts to improve the quality of results and hence increase understanding of the phenomenon.