The grapevine variety identification is important in the wine’s production chain since it is related to its quality, authenticity and singularity. In this study, we addressed the data augmentation approach to identify grape varieties with images acquired in-field. We tested the static transformations, RandAugment, and Cutmix methods. Our results showed that the best result was achieved by the Static method generating 5 images per sample (F1 = 0.89), however without a significative difference if compared with RandAugment generating 2 images. The worst performance was achieved by CutMix (F1 = 0.86).

In this study, we evaluated the use of small pre-trained 3D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) on land use and land cover (LULC) slide-window-based classification. We pretrained the small models in a dataset with origin in the Eurosat dataset and evaluated the benefits of the transfer-learning plus fine-tuning for four different regions using Sentinel-2 L1C imagery (bands of 10 and 20m of spatial resolution), comparing the results to pre-trained models and trained from scratch. The models achieved an F1 Score of between 0.69-0.80 without significative change when pre-training the model. However, for small datasets, pre-training the model improved the classification by up to 3%.

Almond trees in Portugal are susceptible to aphid infestation, which can result in reduced fruit production. To effectively tackle this issue, the combination of remote sensing (RS) data and machine learning (ML) classifiers can be used to accurately detect the presence of aphids. This study focuses in the implementation of ML classifiers and RS data analysis to identify aphids on almond trees, using high-resolution multispectral data collected through an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a Portuguese almond orchard. Four ML classifiers, kNN, SVM, RF and XGBoost, were employed and fine-tuned using vegetation indices derived from spectral data. The results revealed that the SVM classifier achieved an overall accuracy (OA) of 77%, followed by kNN with an OA of 74%, while XGBoost and RF achieved OAs of 71% and 69%, respectively. Consequently, this study demonstrates the viability of employing RS data and ML classifiers for aphid identification in almond orchards.

The increasing importance of water supply systems, particularly in drought-prone regions, and the construction of linear structures, like reservoir dams, have led to the need for adapting these structures to changing conditions. Proper management of dam risks is crucial, as their failure can have severe economic and social consequences. Aging dams, such as those in Spain, require effective monitoring strategies to identify structural issues before they become critical threats. In-person inspections are conducted for maintenance, but modern dams integrate monitoring devices. Satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) technology, specifically the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS), enables precise and non-invasive monitoring of surface deformations using Sentinel-1 satellite data. EGMS provides millimeter-scale precision data, offering insights into subsidence, landslides, and stability issues impacting infrastructure. It is a valuable tool for civilian users and dam managers, providing monitoring data without requiring technical expertise. The SIAGUA project in Spain utilizes EGMS to monitor dams and surrounding areas, providing surveillance information to dam managers.

Public lighting is crucial for maintaining the safety and well-being of communities. Current inspection methods involve examining the luminaires during the day, but this approach has drawbacks, including energy consumption, delay in detecting issues, and high costs and time investment. Utilising deep learning based automatic detection is an advanced method that can be used for identifying and locating issues in this field. This study aims to use deep learning to automatically detect burnt-out street lights, using Seville (Spain) as a case study. The study uses high-resolution night time imagery from the JL1-3B satellite to create a dataset called NLight, which is then divided into three subsets: NL1, NL2, and NT. The NL1 and NL2 datasets are used to train and evaluate YOLOv5 and YOLOv7 segmentation models for instance segmentation of streets. And then, distance outliers were detected to find the lights off. Finally, the NT dataset is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The study finds that YOLOv5 achieved a mask mAP of 57.7%, and the proposed methodology had a precision of 30.8% and a recall of 28.3%. The main goal of this work is accomplished, but there is still space for future work to improve the methodology.

Public lighting plays a very important role for society's safety and quality of life. The identification of faults in public lighting is essential for the maintenance and prevention of safety. Traditionally, this task depends on human action, through checking during the day, representing expenditure and waste of energy. Automatic detection with deep learning is an innovative solution that can be explored for locating and identifying of this kind of problem. In this study, we present a first approach, composed of several steps, intending to obtain the segmentation of public lighting, using Seville (Spain) as case study. A dataset called NLight was created from a nighttime image taken by the JL1-3B satellite, and four U-Net and FPN architectures were trained with different backbones to segment part of the NLight. The U-Net with InceptionResNetv2 proved to be the model with the best performance, obtained 761 of 815, correct locations (93.4%). This model was used to predict the segmentation of the remaining dataset. This study provides the location of lamps so that we can identify patterns and possible lighting failures in the future.

The grape moth is a common pest that affects grapevines by consuming both fruit and foliage, rendering grapes deformed and unsellable. Integrated pest management for the grape moth heavily relies on pheromone traps, which serve a crucial function by identifying and tracking adult moth populations. This information is then used to determine the most appropriate time and method for implementing other control techniques. This study aims to find the best method for detecting small insects. We evaluate the following recent YOLO models: v5, v6, v7, and v8 for detecting and counting grape moths in insect traps. The best performance was achieved by YOLOv8, with an average precision of 92.4% and a counting error of 8.1%.

The European Union (EU) established through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) an aid system and subsidies for farmers that cultivate vineyards. Eligible areas should be controlled and registered in Geographic Information Systems. The agencies paying this support must check that the parcels have an agricultural activity through an on-the-spot check or the analysis of aerial or satellite images. Abandonment situations lead to the cancellation of aid payments. In the Douro Demarcated Region of Portugal, inspections are conducted according to EU-defined methods. However, due to the vast size of the region, which spans approximately 250,000 hectares with vineyard cultures occupying 43,843 hectares, the analysis time and specialized human resources required for these inspections are significant.In this study, we curated a new dataset for training convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and fine-tuned pretrained VGG models to classify vineyards as abandoned or non-abandoned. The baseline model achieved an accuracy of 95.1% on the test dataset, while the top-performing model achieved an impressive overall accuracy and F1-score of 99% for both classes.

The estimation of dendrometric parameters of tree crops is crucial to decision making support for ecological and economic reasons. However, traditional methods for its measurement are time-consuming and laborious. Remote sensing data acquired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) combined with computer vision and Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithms can provide an easier and reliable solution to estimate those parameters. Nevertheless, various UAV flight settings can influence the quality of parameters derived from these data (e.g., flight height, imagery overlap). Thus, the main goal of this study is to assess the impact of different flight configurations on the detection of olive trees and on height and crown diameter estimation. The results showed that not only the configuration of the flight affects the dendrometric results, but also the topography of the terrain. Automatic tree detection revealed to be insensitive to the different flight configurations, whereas the tree height estimation was strongly affected. Among the analysed flights, the plan in double grid at 60 m of flight altitude and 90% of frontal overlap showed the best performance.

Multi-temporal InSAR (MT-InSAR) observations, which enable deformation monitoring at an unprecedented scale, are usually affected by decorrelation and other noise inducing factors. Such observations (PS - Persistent scatterers), are usually in the order of several thousand, making their respective evaluation frequently computationally expensive. In the present study, we propose an approach for the detection of MT-InSAR outlying observations through the implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classification models. For each PS, the corresponding MT-InSAR parameters and the respective parameters of the neighboring scatterers and its relative position are considered. Tests in two independent datasets, covering the regions of Bratislava city and the suburbs of Prievidza, Slovakia, were performed. The results showed that such models offer a robust and reduced computation time method for the evaluation of MT-InSAR outlying observations. However, the applicability of these models is limited by the deformation pattern in which such models were trained.

The grape variety plays an important role in the wine production chain, thus identifying it is crucial for production control. Ampelographers, professionals who identify grape varieties through plant visual analysis, are scarce, and molecular markers are expansive to identify grape varieties on a large scale. In this context, Deep Learning models become an effective way to handle ampelographers scarcity. In this work, we explore the benefit of using deep learning vision transformers architecture relative to conventional CNN to identify 12 grapevine varieties using leaf-centred RGB images acquired in the field. We train an Xception model as a baseline and four different configurations of the ViT_B model. The best model achieved 0.96 of Fl-score, outperforming the state-of-the-art convolutional-based model in the used dataset.

The grapevine variety plays an important role in wine chain production, thus identifying it is crucial for control activities. However, the specialists responsible for identifying the different varieties, mainly through visual analysis, are disappearing. In this scenario, Deep Learning (DL) classification techniques become a possible solution to handle professionals' scarcity. Nevertheless, previous experiments show that trained classification models use the background information to make decisions, which should be avoided. In this paper, we present a study allowing the assessment of removing background regions from the grapevine images in the improvement classification using DL models. The Xception model is trained with a normal dataset and its segmented version. The Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME), Grad-CAM, and Grad-CAM++ approaches are used to visualize the segmentation impact in classification decisions. F1-score of 0.92 and 0.94 were achieved, respectively, for segmented-dataset and normal-dataset trained models. Despite the model trained with the segmented-dataset to achieve a worse performance, the Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches showed that it looks into more reliable regions when making decisions.

The detection of invasive plant species in aquatic ecosystems is important to help in the control or to mitigate its spread and impacts. Remote sensing (RS) can be explored in this context, helping to monitor this type of plants. This study intends to present a free to use and open-source software application that, through a graphical user interface, can process remote sensed data to monitor the spread of invasive plant species in aquatic environments, enabling a multi-temporal monitoring. Both unmanned aerial vehicle and satellite-based data were used to validate the potential of the proposed application. A site containing water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) was selected as case study. Both RS platforms provided effective data to detect the areas containing water hyacinth. Thus, this tool provides an alternative and user-friendly way to include RS-based data in ecological studies allowing the detection of invasive plants in water channels.

On rugged slopes overlooking the Douro River we find the Alto Douro Wine Region in Portugal, populated by plantations in schist lands of difficult access and mostly manual work. The combined features of this region are a source of motivation to explore remote sensing techniques associated with artificial intelligence. In this paper, a preliminary approach for terrace vineyards detection is presented. This is a key-enabling task towards the achievement of important goals such as multi-temporal crop evaluation and cultures characterization. The proposed methodology consists in the application of a deep learning model (U-net) to detect the terrace vineyards using satellite images dataset acquired with Google Earth Pro. The proposed methodology showed very promising detection capabilities.

In the last decade Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have become a reference tool for agriculture applications. The integration of multispectral sensors that can capture near infrared (NIR) and red edge spectral reflectance allows the creation of vegetation indices, which are fundamental for crop monitoring process. In this study, we propose a methodology to analyze the vegetative state of almond crops using multi-temporal data acquired by a multispectral sensor accoupled to an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The methodology implemented allowed individual tree parameters extraction, such as number of trees, tree height, and tree crown area. This also allowed the acquisition of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) information for each tree. The multi-temporal data showed significant variations in the vegetative state of almond crops.

SAR Interferometry (InSAR) techniques are for detecting and monitoring ground deformation all over the planet. Natural disasters such as volcanoes and earthquakes deformations are among the main applications, and the great developments that we have witnessed in recent years suggests that near real-time monitoring will soon be possible. InSAR is developing fast - space agencies are launching more satellites, leading to exponential data growth. Consequently, conventional techniques cannot process all the acquired data. Modern deep learning methods can be a solution since they reach high accuracy in automatically detecting patterns in images and are fast to operate. In this work, we explore the contribution of deep learning vision transformer models to automatically detect seismic deformation in SAR interferograms. A VGG19 model is trained as baseline and ViT model uses$256\times 256$pixels patches and the full interferogram. The ViT model outperforms the state-of-the-art both for patch and full interferogram approaches, achieving 0.88 and 0.92 F1-score, respectively.

Insect pests are the main cause of loss of productivity and quality in crops worldwide. Insect monitoring becomes necessary for the early detection of pests and thus avoiding the excessive use of pesticides. Automatic detection of insects attracted by traps is a form of monitoring. Modern data-driven methods present great results for object detection when representative datasets are available, but public datasets for insect detection are few and small. Pest24 public dataset is extensive, but noisy resulting in a poor detection rate. In this work, we aim to improve insect detection in the Pest24 dataset. We propose the creation of three sub-datasets selecting the highest represented classes, the highest colour discrepancy, and the one with the highest relative scale, respectively. Several Faster R-CNN and YOLOv5 architectures are explored, and the best results are achieved with the YOLOv5 with an mAP of 95.5%.

Modelling of material appearance from reflectance measurements has become increasingly prevalent due to the development of novel methodologies in Computer Graphics. In the last few years, some advances have been made in measuring the light-material interactions, by employing goniometers/reflectometers under specific laboratory’s constraints. A wide range of applications benefit from data-driven appearance modelling techniques and material databases to create photorealistic scenarios and physically based simulations. However, important limitations arise from the current material scanning process, mostly related to the high diversity of existing materials in the real-world, the tedious process for material scanning and the spectral characterisation behaviour. Consequently, new approaches are required both for the automatic material acquisition process and for the generation of measured material databases. In this study, a novel approach for material appearance acquisition using hyperspectral data is proposed. A dense 3D point cloud filled with spectral data was generated from the images obtained by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with an RGB camera and a hyperspectral sensor. The observed hyperspectral signatures were used to recognise natural and artificial materials in the 3D point cloud according to spectral similarity. Then, a parametrisation of Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) was carried out by sampling the BRDF space for each material. Consequently, each material is characterised by multiple samples with different incoming and outgoing angles. Finally, an analysis of BRDF sample completeness is performed considering four sunlight positions and 16x16 resolution for each material. The results demonstrated the capability of the used technology and the effectiveness of our method to be used in applications such as spectral rendering and real-word material acquisition and classification.

This study assesses machine learning methods for the classification of an intertidal reef using RGB and multispectral imagery acquired by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). After the photogrammetric processing of the acquired data an orthophoto mosaic was generated, from the RGB imagery, and the reflectance of four bands (green, red, red edge and near infrared) from the multispectral data. Four machine learning classifiers were evaluated: support vector machines (SVM), artificial neural networks (ANN) naive Bayes (NB) and random forests (RF). The data was classified into four classes: sand; rock, barnacles, limpets; mussels, rock; and algae mixed. The classifiers were trained with RGB and with multispectral data. The pixel-based classification results demonstrated that when using multispectral data all classifiers overcame the performance achieved when using RGB data. NB classifier performed better in discriminating all classes and detecting submerged seaweeds. Such techniques present a valuable tool for accurately map the coastal zone.

In this paper we present a Deep Learning-based methodology to automatically classify 12 of the most representative grape-varieties existing in the Douro Demarked region, Portugal. The dataset used consisted of images of leaves at different stages of development, collected on their natural environment. The development of such methodologies becomes particularly important, in a scenario in which ampeleographers are disappearing, creating a gap in the task of inspection of grape varieties. Our approach was based on the transfer learning of the Xcepetion model, using Focal Loss, adaptive learning rate decay and SGD. The model obtained a F1 score of 0.93. To clearly understand the predictions of the model, and realize which regions of the image contributed the most to the classification, the LIME library was used. This way it was possible to identify the parts of the images that were considered for and against each prediction.

Materials represented by measured BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution function) with reflectance data captured from real-world materials have become increasingly prevalent due to the development of novel measurement approaches. Nowadays, important limitations can be highlighted in the current material scanning process, mostly related to the high diversity of existing materials in the real-world and the tedious process for material scanning. Consequently, new approaches are required both for the automatic material acquisition process and for the generation of measured material databases. In this study, a novel approach is proposed for modelling the material appearance by sampling hyperspectral measurements on the BRDF domain. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based hyperspectral sensor was used to capture high spatial and spectral resolution data. The generated hyperspectral data cubes were used to identify materials with a similar spectral behaviour. Then, a sparse mapping of collected samples is developed to study the appearance of natural and artificial materials in an urban scenario.

The development and implementation of a virtual environment that aims to support farmers in managing their land and crops in a more sustainable way is presented in this paper. It allows both textual and 3D visualization of crop-related biophysical parameters, such as height, volume and length. Moreover, the latter can be dynamically altered according to various criteria. A case study was conducted in a Portuguese vineyard. The application was developed using the Unity software, while a real agricultural data feed was provided by mySense interface. The virtual environment can be seen as a valuable decision support system to assist farmers.

After the great activity of infrastructure development experienced in the 20thcentury, there are thousands of engineering infrastructures that require safety monitoring worldwide. Rigorous inspection programs and the monitoring of these infrastructures, such as reservoir dams, are essential for the safety of citizens and properties. These interventions are usually costly and time-consuming, making in many cases, virtually impossible to monitor individually each dam which may represent a potential security risk. Multi-temporal InSAR has been successfully applied in the monitoring of infrastructures affected by tunneling works, aquifer extraction, and natural phenomena (tectonics, volcanism, seism, …), among others. The great advantage of MT-InSAR is that it provides measurement uncertainties of the order of 1 mm/year, interpreting time series of interferometric phases of coherent reflectors present in the area, called Persistent Scatterers, without the need for field work or any special equipment. To demonstrate the potential and reliability of this technique, in this paper, we present the adaptation and application of MT-InSAR technique to monitor embankment dams, obtaining vertical displacements, characterizing their consolidation rates, and allowing the identification of potential problems that require further field investigation. This study is part of the ReMoDams project, a Spanish research initiative developed for monitoring dam structural stability from space using satellite radar interferometry.

With the continuous escalation of global warming and consequent water scarcity, techniques to optimize water use of irrigation in agriculture are needed. Thus, deficit irrigation strategies (DI) can be used for a sustainable water usage. However, it is necessary to recursively monitor plant response under DI to ensure their productivity and prevent from severe water stress. The goal of this study is to assesscanopy and soil surface temperatures of olive trees under different irrigation strategies, through thermal infrared images obtained by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The temperatures from the different irrigation strategies were analysed with three approaches using the difference between canopy and air temperatures (Tc-Ta). The use of UAV-based thermal infrared imagery has proven to be extremely useful to the estimation of olive canopy and soil surface temperatures, which allow to discriminate different irrigation treatments.

Developed focusing agriculture sustainability, mySense is a comprehensive close-range sensor-based data management environment to improve precision farming practices. It integrates discussion platforms for quick problem solving through experts support and a computational intelligence layer for multipurpose application (e.g. vine variety discrimination, plant disease detection and identification). Attending the need for keeping track of agricultural crops not only based on close-range sensing but also at a macro perspective, mySense was complemented with proper functionalities to unlock macro-monitoring features, through the implementation of a Web-based Geographical Information System (WebGIS) planned as a sidekick application that provides agriculture professionals with visual decision support tools over remote sensed data. This paper presents and discusses its specification and implementation.

Nowadays, many drone models are available, designed for the most diverse applications. However, the various models fall into one of two types of drone: multi-copter or fixed-wing. The first type of drone consumes a lot of energy, since motors have to turn during all the flight. The former type of drone, in general needs a runway to take-off and landing. Moreover, they fly fast and cannot be motionless, which is unsuitable for many applications. In this paper we present a new paramotor drone, conceived and designed to overcome the highlighted limitations and to be a low-cost solution adapted for most applications. The selection of the various components of the presented prototype was based on a very thorough study, considering aerodynamic and efficiency criteria.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used nowadays as a standard tool to derive very high-resolution geospatial data. However, UAV payload limitation imposes the use of not such reliable hardware affecting the georeferencing precision. In the literature it is possible to find numerous studies investigating the parameters influencing UAV-based products quality. Even if new photogrammetry methods could, in theory, avoid the use of ground control points (GCPs), they still playa key role to assure quality products. Nevertheless, usually only the number and distribution of GCPs are taking into account, since both change the geometric accuracy of the final products. In order to improve the understanding of the actual influence of GCPs, in this study we evaluate how can different physical characteristics affect GCPs identification in aerial images. The results demonstrate that GCPs' color, material, size and shape, among others, may influence a precise identification in aerial imagery.

Individual tree segmentation is a challenging task due to the labour-intensive and time-consuming work required. Remote sensing data acquired from sensors coupled in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) constitutes a viable alternative to provide a quicker data acquisition, covering broader areas in a shorter period of time. This study aims to use UAV-based multispectral imagery to automatically identify individual trees in a chestnut stand. Tree parameters were estimated allowing its characterization. The leaf area index (LAI) was measured and was correlated with the estimated parameters. A good correlation was found for NDVI(R2= 0.76), while this relationship was less evident in the tree crown area and tree height. This way, our results indicate that the use of UAV-based multispectral imagery is a quick and reliable way to determine canopy structural parameters and LAI of chestnut trees.

In this study machine learning methods were applied to RGB data obtained by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to assess this effectiveness in vineyard classification. The very high-resolution UAV-based imagery was subjected to a photogrammetric processing allowing the generation of different outcomes: orthophoto mosaic, crop surface model and five vegetation indices. The orthophoto mosaic was used in an object-based image analysis approach to group pixels with similar values into objects. Three machine learning techniques-support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF) and artificial neural network (ANN)-were applied to classify the data into four classes: grapevine, shadow, soil and other vegetation. The data were divided with 22% (n=240, 60 per class) for training purposes and 78% (n = 850) for testing purposes. The mean value of the objects from each feature were used to create a dataset for prediction. The results demonstrated that both RF and ANN models showed a good performance, yet the RF classifier achieved better results.

This work focuses on a reservoir with water leaks since its construction, the Benínar reservoir. The purpose of this reservoir was to regulate the Adra River basin, lying between the provinces of Almería and Granada, and located south of Sierra Nevada Mountains (in the Inner Zones of the Betic Cordilleras, SE Spain). This basin extends over 746 km2, at an altitude of 2780 m, with a very rough terrain and frequent torrential water flow. Due to the continuous extension of greenhouses in the east and west parts of Almería, the water demand for agriculture and urban consumption increases day by day. As a consequence, aquifers are being overexploited, causing the current system to not be sustainable for a long time, that is, the storage capacity of the underground media and their possible contributions to an efficient management of resources have not been adequately taken into account. The Benínar dam has always had problems with water leaks. The dam was built even knowing that the land was not the most suitable, due to the frequent earth movements that took place in the town of Benínar, which was submerged beneath the waters of the reservoir. In this work, we process multi-temporal SAR datasets coming from the C-band satellites ERS-1/2, Envisat, and Sentinel-1A/B using MT-InSAR techniques, being able to monitor the deformation behavior of this dam for a long time period of more than 25 years, from 1992 to 2018.

Machine Learning (ML) progressed significantly in the last decade, evolving the computer-based learning/prediction paradigm to a much more effective class of models known as Deep learning (DL). Since then, hyperspectral data processing relying on DL approaches is getting more popular, competing with the traditional classification techniques. In this paper, a valid ML/DL-based works applied to hyperspectral data processing is reviewed in order to get an insight regarding the approaches available for the effective meaning extraction from this type of data. Next, a general DL-based methodology focusing on hyperspectral data processing to provide farmers and winemakers effective tools for earlier threat detection is proposed.

The Aswan High Dam, Egypt, was built in the 1960s and is one of the biggest dams in the world. It stopped the seasonal flood of Nile river allowing the urban expansion of cities/villages and the full year cultivation, producing 10×109kWh of power annually. The dam is located in an area where several earthquakes (ML<;6) occurred from 1981 to 2007. In this paper, we want to identify any potential damage that could be caused to the dam, and assess its overall structural stability using Multi-Temporal InSAR (MT-InSAR). To reach this goal, we process Envisat data from descending orbits acquired between 2003 and 2010. Our initial estimates show relatively small rates (maximum around -3 mm/yr in the satellite Line-Of-Sight) of subsidence, whose implications must be further investigated. In addition, we perform a preliminary stress-strain analysis of the dam using FEL and FEM methods to assess if the detected movements correspond to the expected vertical behavior for such mega-structure.

Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) is a remote sensing technique very effective for the measurement of small displacements of the Earth's surface over large areas at a very low cost in comparison with conventional geodetic techniques. Advanced InSAR time series (Multi-Temporal InSAR or MT - InSAR) algorithms for monitoring and investigating surface displacement on Earth are based on conventional radar interferometry. These techniques allow us to measure deformation with uncertainties of one millimeter per year, interpreting time series of interferometric phases at coherent point scatterers (PS) without the need for human or special equipment presence. By applying InSAR processing techniques to a series of radar images over the same region, it is possible to monitor large areas and detect vertical displacements of ground, and infrastructures on the ground, and therefore identify abnormal or excessive movements indicating potential problems requiring detailed ground investigation. In this paper, we apply the PS- InSAR technique to a dataset of ERS-1/2 and Envisat radar images covering the period 1993-2010, to monitor the northern sector of the Valencia basin (Valencia city and its surroundings). Some subsiding areas were detected, with rates up to -5 mm/yr, whose causes are being investigated.

Thresholding on coherence is a common practice for identifying the surface scatterers that are less affected by decorrelation noise during post-processing and visualisation of the results from multi-temporal InSAR techniques. Simple selection of the points with coherence greater than a specific value is, however, challenged by the presence of spatial dependence among observations. If the discrepancies in the areas of moderate coherence share similar behaviour, it appears important to take into account their spatial correlation for correct inference. Low coherence areas thus could serve as clear indicators of measurement noise or imperfections in mathematical models. Once exhibiting properties of statistical similarity, they allow for detection of observations that could be considered as outliers and trimmed from the dataset. In this paper we propose an approach based on renowned data mining and exploratory data analysis procedures for mitigating the impact of outlying observations in the final results.