Geohazard assessment of Mexico City’s Metro system derived from SAR interferometry observations

Abstract

Abstract Land subsidence rates in Mexico City reach 500 mm/year, causing progressive damage to the city’s core infrastructure, including the Metro system. A deadly overpass collapse in 2021, along a Metro line that had operated for less than 10 years, brought subsidence-related structural damage to the attention of the system’s authorities and led to major repairs to two of the twelve Metro lines. Still, the need for quantifying the magnitude and extent of subsidence affecting the Metro system’s widespread infrastructure prevails. Using a wealth of satellite radar interferometry observations, levelling surveys, subsurface profiles, linear gradient and differential displacement analyses, and structural-engineering parameters, we assess the vulnerability of the Metro system’s street-level and elevated segments to land subsidence. Our results reveal that high subsidence velocity gradients occur over sharp transitional zones between stable and fast-subsiding areas, reaching values of 1 $$\times \,10 ^{-3}$$ × 10 - 3 year $$^{-1}$$ - 1 , resulting in slope changes up to 3.5% over a 20-year period and differential displacements between columns. Our findings suggest locations where the consequences of subsidence have compromised the train’s braking safety design, increased railway flooding hazard, produced railway bending, and reduced the conceived 50-year service life of the Metro’s elevated overpasses.