The Dubai-Fujairah Freeway is a 45 km highway traversing the UAE, including a challenging section through the rugged Hajar Mountains that required significant volumes of cut and fill. Some portions of the freeway are supported by record-breaking 70-metre-high reinforced soil walls. However, as often happens after successful project delivery, structural monitoring ceased shortly after construction. Tensar, the engineering firm behind these walls, sought to evaluate their performance 10 years post-construction. The initial options for this assessment were costly in-situ surveys that required multiple site visits.

To address this challenge, an InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) analysis was performed using satellite data over a four-year retrospective period. By combining this satellite-based InSAR data with in-situ monitoring data collected during and shortly after construction, the study demonstrated the excellent performance of the reinforced soil walls over the last decade. The InSAR analysis allowed for immediate identification of performance trends without the delays associated with conventional monitoring methods.

This approach provided a safe, non-disruptive, and cost-effective solution for monitoring, eliminating the need for frequent site visits.