Advances in Ground Penetrating Radar for Disaster Damage Evaluation

TY - JOUR

T1 - Advances in Ground Penetrating Radar for Disaster Damage Evaluation

AU - Xu, Yihan

AU - Smirnov, Mikhail

AU - Nikolov, Yordan

AU - Dong, Ziqian

AU - Rojas-Cessa, Roberto

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2013 IEEE.

PY - 2026

Y1 - 2026

N2 - Climate-driven natural disasters are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, posing a serious threat to the stability of the global civil infrastructure, natural ecosystems, and economy. The surface damage caused by such disasters can be readily identified through visual inspection or optical techniques. However, subsurface damage, which can cause hazardous conditions, is not easily observable. Therefore, detection requires effective non-destructive sensing technologies. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a widely used technology for the rapid non-destructive characterization of the shallow subsurface in many hazard-affected settings. This paper reviews state-of-the-art GPR applications for damage assessment in post-disaster scenarios. First, a workflow is introduced to determine whether GPR is a suitable technology for assessing subsurface damage in hazardous environments. The working principles and limitations of GPR were then presented to support the selection of an appropriate mode of operation. The use of GPR in post-disaster structural damage assessment is reviewed and categorized by hazard type, including storms, earthquakes, landslides, mudslides, deep freeze, and coastal tides. This review also examines the integration of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into GPR deployments for automated data acquisition in inaccessible or high-risk environments and the use of machine learning for the analysis and interpretation of GPR data. This paper concludes with a discussion of the remaining challenges faced by GPR in such applications and future research directions.

AB - Climate-driven natural disasters are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, posing a serious threat to the stability of the global civil infrastructure, natural ecosystems, and economy. The surface damage caused by such disasters can be readily identified through visual inspection or optical techniques. However, subsurface damage, which can cause hazardous conditions, is not easily observable. Therefore, detection requires effective non-destructive sensing technologies. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a widely used technology for the rapid non-destructive characterization of the shallow subsurface in many hazard-affected settings. This paper reviews state-of-the-art GPR applications for damage assessment in post-disaster scenarios. First, a workflow is introduced to determine whether GPR is a suitable technology for assessing subsurface damage in hazardous environments. The working principles and limitations of GPR were then presented to support the selection of an appropriate mode of operation. The use of GPR in post-disaster structural damage assessment is reviewed and categorized by hazard type, including storms, earthquakes, landslides, mudslides, deep freeze, and coastal tides. This review also examines the integration of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into GPR deployments for automated data acquisition in inaccessible or high-risk environments and the use of machine learning for the analysis and interpretation of GPR data. This paper concludes with a discussion of the remaining challenges faced by GPR in such applications and future research directions.

KW - Ground penetrating radar

KW - machine learning

KW - natural hazards

KW - post-disaster assessment

KW - subsurface structural analysis

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105044728062

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105044728062#tab=citedBy

U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2026.3711607

DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2026.3711607

M3 - Review article

SN - 2169-3536

VL - 14

SP - 107943

EP - 107968

JO - IEEE Access

JF - IEEE Access

ER -