InSAR Explorer

Description

InSAR Explorer is a QGIS plugin that allows for dynamic visualization and analysis of InSAR time series data. InSAR Explorer supports visualizing outputs of SARvey, Mintpy, MiaplPy, GMTSAR, and EGMS . The plugin is also available on the QGIS plugins web portal at this link.

Installation

Method 1: Download from QGIS Plugin Repository

1. Open QGIS.

2. Go to Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins….

3. In the All tab of the Plugin Manager, type Insar Explorer in the search bar.

4. Select the InSAR Explorer plugin from the list and click Install Plugin.

Method 2: Install the development version from ZIP file

1. Download the plugin Repository as ZIP.

2. Open QGIS.

3. Go to Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins.

4. Click on the Install from ZIP tab.

5. Select the downloaded ZIP file and click Install Plugin.

Usage

1. Open a vector layer with InSAR time series data.

2. Click on the plugin icon in the toolbar or go to Plugins > InSAR Explorer.

3. Click on any point in the map to display the time series data.

Data Structure

The plugin primarily requires a vector file (e.g., a shapefile or geopackage) containing time series data. The file should have the following attributes:

Field Name	Description
velocity, VEL, or mean_velocity	A field containing the InSAR velocity data.
DYYYYMMDD or YYYYMMDD	Multiple fields for time series data, where YYYYMMDD is the date of the data, e.g., D20190101, D20190201, etc.

For specific time series outputs, like from GMTSAR, InSAR Explorer supports raster format as well. Please refer to the relevant section for GMTSAR in the documentation for more information.

Sample data

A sample shapefile containing time series data for testing the plugin is available on Zenodo repository.

Data preparation

The data can be prepared for different software tools as follows:

SARvey

Use the sarvey_export script to export the time series data to a shapefile or geopackage file. For example:

$ sarvey_export outputs/p2_coh80_ts.h5 -o outputs/shp/p2_coh80_ts.shp

MintPy

Use the save_qgis script to export the time series data to a shapefile. For example:

$ mintpy save_qgis timeseries_ERA5_ramp_demErr.h5 -g inputs/geometrygeo.h5

MiaplPy

Use the save_qgis script to export the time series data to a shapefile. For example:

$ mintpy save_qgis timeseries_ERA5_ramp_demErr.h5 -g inputs/geometrygeo.h5

GMTSAR

GMTSAR provides time series data in raster grd format. This data can be processed in InSAR Explorer using one of two methods:

Method 1: Use the grd Files Directly

You can directly use the raster grd files created by GMTSAR in InSAR Explorer. The expected directory structure for the grd files is as follows:

-| GMTSAR_output/
  -| vel_*.grd
  -| YYYYMMDD_*.grd
  -| YYYYMMDD_*.grd
  -| ...

To use this method: 1. Ensure the grd files associated with the time series are located in the same directory as the vel_*.grd file. 2. Open the original vel_*.grd file created by GMTSAR in QGIS. 3. Set the correct Coordinate Reference System (CRS) for the QGIS project (typically WGS 84).

InSAR Explorer will automatically detect the associated time series files and handle them accordingly.

Method 2: Convert grd to Vector Format

It is possible to convert the time series data from raster grd format to vector formats such as shapefile or geopackage.

Note: You should create the shapefile with proper format as described in Data Structure

StaMPS

to be added.

EGMS

EGMS allows downloading the data in csv format. You can add the data to QGIS as a delimited text layer.

The imported layer has the following fields:

Field Name	Description
mean_velocity	A field containing the InSAR velocity data.
YYYYMMDD	Multiple fields for time series data.

Contributing

We welcome contributions and ideas from the community. If you would like to contribute to the project, please follow the guidelines below.

1. Fork the repository on GitHub.

2. Create a new branch for your feature or bug fix.

3. Implement your feature or bug fix.

4. Update the documentation if necessary.

5. Test your changes locally and make sure they do not break existing functionality.

6. Commit your changes and push to your branch.

7. Create a pull request to the main repository.

For any questions, feel free to send an email to the maintainer.

If you have ideas for new features but don’t feel comfortable writing the code, please open an issue with the tag “feature request”.

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPL-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for more details.

Authors

Mahmud Haghighi, Andreas Piter, Erik Rivas

Contact

For any questions or issues, please create an issue on the GitHub repository.