The society is increasingly at risk from geohazards. This increase is not because of augmented hazard potential, but rather because of an increase in vulnerability of the society, as lastly demonstrated by the Japan earthquake (2011) and tsunami disaster, or the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption that grounded most airlines over Europe. The herein described topics of the Geosphere are therefore of a very high value not only for basic science but also serve as a preparatory for coming innovative observation technologies with application in the Geosphere. New sensor systems, such as the TerraSAR-X and the anticipated Tandem-L mission will boost the data streams that can be analysed by scientists and that will provide the necessary support to decision makers. Challenging questions are:
The overall technical goal is to enhance the understanding of geo-dynamical processes by fully exploiting past (ERS, ALOS/PALSAR), current (TerraSAR-X) and planned (Sentinel-1) SAR satellite missions and developing recommendations and concepts for future missions. This project intends to analyse weaknesses and improve handling and interpretability of SAR and associated data streams, and to better understand geologic processes.