The design and construction of roads and highways are strongly affected by any movement of the ground. To avoid significant, rebuild costs, their design should be adapted to the underlying conditions; but these are often not known since measuring vertical movement (subsidence or heave) is difficult and very costly. Vertical movements are not uncommon in Italy, which is a geologically young country.
A new service called Rheticus based on Sentinel-1 is being used by the Italian state roads agency ANAS to show where movement of the ground has taken, or is taking, place. The national coverage allows ANAS planners and engineers to have a countrywide view of ground movement at considerably lower cost and superior performance compared to alternatives. Regular, high-precision measurements also enable monitoring of roads infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels.