Ecv ice Sheets Technical Proposal

Chapter 3: Management Proposal

8Background experience of the companies

8.1The project team

The consortium consists of:

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  Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
  

Via di Vigna Murata 605, 00143 Rome

in the following referred to as INGV

• 
  Istituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico dell'Ambiente (IREA)
  

Via Diocleziano 328, 80124 Naples

in the following referred to as IREA

INGV is the prime contractor and responsible for scientific and administrative project management.

Several different sections of INGV shall take part in the project, namely:

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  the National Earthquake Centre (CNT), with project personnel located in Rome (IT);
  
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  the Seismology applied to Engineering section (Milano-Pavia), with project personnel located in Milan (IT) and L'Aquila (IT)
  
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  the Seismology and tectonophysics section (Roma 1), with project personnel located in L'Aquila (IT)
  

8.2Overview of relevant experience

8.2.1INGV

INGV (www.ingv.it) is a public institution under the control of the Ministry of University and Research, whose origin dates back to 1841. Its staff includes over 550 full-time scientists, 210 technicians and 130 post-docs and scholarship holders every year. With an annual turnover of about €110 million and large facilities in Rome (headquarters), Milano, Bologna, Pisa, Napoli, Catania and Palermo, INGV is currently the largest European body for research in Geophysics and Volcanology. Beyond performing applied and fundamental research in geophysics, a relevant part of INGV activity is devoted to 24h, 7d seismic surveillance, using state-of-the-art seismological, geodetic, geochemical, and remote sensing observing networks and systems. INGV research results are used in seismic risk management and assessment through a close collaboration with the Italian Civil Protection Department. INGV features a significant expertise in the assessment of seismic hazard at various scales and has a leading role in the development in the Italian seismic hazard map. INGV is the leading institution in several European research projects and infrastructure development projects, among the latter the European Plate Observing System - EPOS, and the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory – EMSO. Currently INGV is undergoing significant administrative re-organisations, so that an updated company organigramme cannot be provided.

INGV has been active in the field of earthquake studies using Synthetic Aperture Radar since the ninties. It has produced tens of publications concerning studies of inter-seismic, co-seismic and post-seismic surface deformation, fault modeling (linear and FEM) and stress distribution modeling. Examples can be found in the Curricula of Dr. S. Salvi, Dr. S. Atzori, Dr. G. Pezzo and Dr. J.P. Merryman Boncori in Annex A. Of particular relevance for this project is that the only two interseismic deformation measurements on Italian faults have been carried out by INGV personnel (Hunstad et al., 2009) and (Pezzo et al., 2013, submitted to Geophysical Journal International). INGV personnel has also carried out several algorithm development activities concerning integration of SAR and GPS techniques (see CV of S. Atzori and R. Devoti in Annex A) and error characterization (see CV of J.P. Merryman Boncori). Recently, in the frawework of the Italian Space Agency project MuSA (Use of Multiband Satellite SAR data for the Study of Crustal Deformation Related to the Seismic Cycle), a multi-aperture InSAR processor chain was implemented and a method to use numerical weather models from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has been implemented and is currently being tested. Currently the SAR working group is active within several national projects (with ASI and the Civil Protection department) as well as international projects (e.g. MARsite, RASOR).

In the field of seismic hazard and seismic risk assessment, INGV has had significant responsibilities at the national level and significant involvements internationally., and he coordinated. He participated to several international projects mainly focused on seismic hazard and on historical catalogues and macroseismic databases. From the beginning of 2013 he is responsible of the Seismic Hazard Center (CPS - Centro Pericolosità Sismica) at INGV, in charge of the update of the reference seismic hazard model of Italy. In the project he will lead the WP 1100 (Hazard model generation requirements) and 2400 (Integration of deformation measurements for hazard modelling). which in recent years include:

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  Participation in the working group that released the seismic hazard map of Italy (MPS04), acknowledged as reference map by the Prime Minister Ordinance 3519;
  
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  Coordination of the INGV-Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC) project S1 that released the seismic hazard model on which the seismic input to the 2008 building code of Italy is based;
  
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  Coordination of the Seismic Hazard Center (CPS - Centro Pericolosità Sismica) at INGV, in charge of the update of the reference seismic hazard model of Italy
  
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  coordination of the “Distributed Archive of Historical Earthquake Data” WP for the EU del progetto UE NERIES (Network of Research Infrastructure for European Seismology);
  
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  co-coordination of the GEM project (Tools for compiling the Global Earthquake History);
  
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  co-coordination of the Italian Civil Protection project S4 “Banca dati accelerometrici”;
  
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  development of the accelerometric database (ITACA) and of the Italian national and northern accelerometric network (RAIS)
  

In the field of geophysical applications of GPS data, INGV has reached a long lasting experience concerning GPS analysis and GPS data processing themes. The key topics that the authors faced in the last 10 year of activity at the INGV-CNT (National Earthquake Centre), are:

- GPS raw data processing using Bernese software. Large networks of regional or globally distributed GPS stations are processed routinely using IGS-EUREF standards. The team is currently processing over 600 stations in Italy every day and supply the time series of all available permanent and non-permanent stations archived at INGV-CNT. The GPS velocity field of Italy is a rote product of the current data processing activity. (Devoti et al., 2008; Devoti et al., 2011).

- time series analysis and deformation field computation. The team has a robust multi-year expertise in GPS time series analysis and strain rate computation (Pietrantonio, 2003; Pietrantonio and Riguzzi, 2004; Barzaghi et al., 2004; Devoti et al., 2011)

- integration of different geodetic data and solutions. The team developed software procedures used to combine geodetic solutions obtained from different GPS processing strategies and from different geodetic techniques (e.g. GPS, InSAR, SLR, VLBI) (Bianco et al., 2000; Devoti et al., 2010; Devoti, 2012; Devoti et al., 2012; Atzori et al., 2013)

- analysis and interpretation of the coseismic and post-seismic surface deformation field of different seismic events (Boschi et al., 2006; Giuliani et al., 2007; Anzidei et al., 2009; Devoti et al., 2012; Serpelloni et al., 2012)

- study of the regional inter-seismic deformation field and its hazard implications (Riguzzi et al., 2013; Riguzzi et al., 2012; Caporali et al., 2011). INGV is the reference Research Institute for the Civil Protection Department in the field, among many others, of the seismic hazard. The long experience on this item allowed INGV to lead the project for the elaboration of the national seismic hazard map (www.zonesismiche.mi.ingv.it, 2004), that is the basis for the updating of the seismic zones in Italy and it is the reference seismic hazard model that defines the seismic action in the 2008 national building code. The role of INGV is acknowledged in 2013 with the institution of the Seismic Hazard Centre (Centro Pericolosità Sismica) as the centre in charge of the periodic update of the national seismic hazard model.

8.2.2IREA

The National Research Council (CNR) is the larger public research institution in Italy and is under the control of the Ministry of University and Research. The Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), formerly IRECE, is an Institute of the CNR whose mission is the development of methodologies and technologies for acquisition, processing, fusion and interpretation of images and data obtained by electromagnetic sensors aimed at monitoring environment and territory, at non-invasive diagnostic and at electromagnetic risk assessment. The Institute has consolidated expertise in the fields of optical and microwave remote sensing, diagnostics in situ for environment and territory, combined with the biological one for risk assessment from exposure to electromagnetic fields but also for their possible applications in medicine. In the microwave remote sensing area, IREA is being carrying out research activities in the context of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data processing since late eighties. In the last decade IREA researchers have contributed to significant advances in the development and application of interferometric SAR techniques. This activity is witnessed by a large number of publications on international journals and by the participation to a large national and European (FP6 and FP7) projects. IREA researchers have developed and proposed the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) technique dedicated to the monitoring at lower resolution of ground deformations over large areas, described in a paper that currently scores more than 800 citations (Google Scholar). SBAS is included in the ENVI Sarscape module distributed by Exelis Visual Information Solutions. IREA is a founding member of the Campania Regional Center of Competence on the “Analysis and Monitoring of the Environmental Risk” and a Center of Competence of the Italian Civil Protection. An organigramme of IREA i provided in Figure .

Figure : IREA organigramme.