Statistical Analysis of Changes in Sentinel-1 Time Series on the Google Earth Engine

A sequential complex Wishart-based algorithm which is applicable to the dual polarization intensity data archived on the GEE is used. Both the algorithm and a software interface to the GEE Python API for convenient data exploration and analysis are presented; the latter can be run from a platform independent Docker container and the source code is available on GitHub. Application examples are given involving the monitoring of anthropogenic activity (shipping, uranium mining, deforestation) and disaster assessment (flash floods). These highlight the advantages of the good temporal resolution resulting from cloud cover independence, short revisit times and near real time data availability.