Satellite Multispectral and Infrared Imagery Analysis to Contextualize Bridge Structural Health Observations – A study of the Samuel de Champlain Bridge in Montreal, Canada

Abstract

In 2021-2022, two related validation studies were conducted on structural health monitoring of the Samuel de Champlain Bridge in the La Prairie Basin of the Saint Lawrence River near Montreal, Canada. In the first study, C-band satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations of bridge line-ofsight thermal displacement measurements were compared to predicted values. A companion observational study of multispectral (MS) imagery assessed turbulent and flow features on the river’s surface that are indicative of changes in the riverbed morphology and used stereo MS imagery to derive river velocity vectors using a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) algorithm. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a follow-up study, in which timeseries of InSAR displacement observations at nine piers of the Samuel de Champlain Bridge were compared to water depth, ambient water surface temperature from satellite imagery, and ambient air temperature from a nearby in-situ weather station.