Application of continuous teo-epoch analysis to GPS deformation monitoring in Iskandar Malaysia

Abstract

Natural hazards that have disastrous impacts on us include earthquakes, landslides, floods, storm surges, severe winds, bushfires, and tsunamis. Thus, Monitoring of deformation especially in urban areas is of great importance to provide precise and reliable deformation information to assess seismic hazards and risks. Advanced GPS Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) network known as ISKANDARnet is utilised to detect deformation movements continuously in Iskandar, State of Johor Malaysia. This paper discusses the feasibility of using ISKANDARnet for deformation monitoring and analysis. The applications of Iteratively Weighted Similarity Transformation (IWST) and Similarity Transformation (S-Transformation) for conducting a continuous two-epoch analysis are also investigated. In this study, three GPS CORS from ISKANDARnet were utilised as the object monitoring stations along with the nearby International GNSS Services (IGS) stations (NTUS, XMIS, COCO and PIMO) as the reference monitoring stations. GPS data is streamed and processed by the high precision scientific GPS data processing software module, called Bernese Processing Engine (BPE) in persistent processing strategic. A deformation analysis module was developed using MATLAB programming language to carry out continuous two-epoch analysis. The two-epoch analysis only concerns any epochs against the initial epoch. By applying these techniques, unstable points were identified within the monitoring network and accurate deformation displacement vectors were computed. A total of six months GPS data are streamed and processed since 1st July 2010 until 31st December 2010. Test results showed that the system performed satisfactorily. This study brings the invaluable contribution to the current studies of regional land deformation in Malaysia.