Ecv ice Sheets Technical Proposal

CHARMING

Proposal in response to

AO/1-7616/13/I-BG

STSE Pathfinders
Reference : INGV-IREA-ESA-CHARMING-PROP-001

Version : 1.0 page

Date : 07 Nov 2013 /

CHARMING: Constraining Seismic Hazard Models with InSAR and GPS
A proposal in response to

Invitation to Tender AO/1-7616/13/I-BG

Support to Science (STSE) - Pathfinders

Prepared by:

John Peter Merryman Boncori, Giuseppe Pezzo, Michele Matteo Cosimo Carafa, Vanja Kastelic, Francesco Visini, Vera d'Amico, Carlo Meletti, Roberto Devoti, Simone Atzori, Stefano Salvi

(Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia)

Gianfranco Fornaro, Paolo Berardino, Diego Reale

(Istituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico dell'Ambiente)

Change Log

Issue	Author	Affected Section	Reason	Status
1.0	INGV/IREA	All	Document Creation	Released to ALL on 2013-11-07

Chapter 1: Executive Summary

Team composition and organisation

The consortium consists of:

• 
  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.

IREA is the only subcontractor. A sub-contract between INGV and IREA shall be prepared as soon as a signed contract between INGV and ESA shall be received by INGV.

The Project Manager shall be Dr. John Peter Merryman Boncori, INGV, National Earthquake Centre (CNT).

The Science Lead shall be Dr. Stefano Salvi, INGV, National Earthquake Centre (CNT).

Project personnel is grouped into three science teams:

The SAR science team shall have Dr. John Peter Merryman Boncori as overall responsible and shall consist of two units, the responible for which are listed in italics:

• 
  INGV unit, INGV, National Earthquake Centre (CNT):
  

Dr. John Peter Merryman Boncori (responsible);

Dr. Stefano Salvi;

Dr. Giuseppe Pezzo;

Dr. Simone Atzori.

• 
  IREA unit:
  

Dr. Gianfranco Fornaro (responsible);

Dr. Paolo Berardino;

Dr. Diego Reale.

The GPS science team, INGV, National Earthquake Centre (CNT):

Dr. Roberto Devoti (responsible);

Dr. Federica Riguzzi;

Dr. Grazia Pietrantonio.

The Seismic Hazard (SHA) science team:

Dr. Carlo Meletti (responsible), INGV, Seismology applied to Engineering department;

Dr. Vera D'Amico, INGV, Seismology applied to Engineering department;

Dr. Francesco Visini, INGV, Seismology applied to Engineering department;

Dr. Michele Matteo Cosimo Carafa, INGV, Seismology and Tectonophysics department;

Dr. Vanja Kastelic, INGV, Seismology and Tectonophysics department;

Overview of the proposed feasibility study

This proposal describes a feasibility study named: "Constraining Seismic Hazard Models with InSAR and GPS (CHARMING)".

The context of the proposal is Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA), i.e. the scientific field which aims to quantify the probability that ground motion at a specified site will exceed some level of a given shaking parameter of engineering interest (e.g., peak ground acceleration) during a specified future time frame. The end-users of PSHA represent a broad community including people concerned with land-use planning, seismic safety provisions of building codes (for the design of buildings, critical facilities, and lifelines), disaster preparation and recovery, emergency response, and organizations that promote public education for mitigating earthquake risk.

The project's main objective is to investigate whether surface deformation measurements, derived from GPS and Synthetic Aperture Radar data can be successfully incorporated by PSHA models and improve their quality. In particular, we propose to investigate several aspects related to the marginal benefit provided by SAR compared to GPS alone.

Among the outcomes of this feasibility study we forsee:

• 
  A contribution to understand if and how the current and future SAR archives can be exploited for PSHA in areas bordering poorly understood plate boundary zones, like the Mediterranean;
  
• 
  A feasibility study of two SAR processing algorithms, one completely novel, a second very recently applied in a different context (landslides). If these methods were successfull, they could be usefully exploited by other current external initiatives oriented towards global strain mapping;
  
• 
  A significantly improved PSHA model for central Italy;
  

Our proposal is highly innovative, and complements other ongoing external initiatives related to the field of interest. Furthermore it exploits several synergies, in terms of scientific competences (3 independent fields of expertise, distributed across two major Italian research centres) and data sources (4 different SAR sensors, GPS data, seismological data, modeling, geological in-situ data).

Throughout the project we also propose to exploit a significant amount of ESA archive data (several thousands of standard image frames), thus responding to the ITT requirements.

Structure of this proposal

This proposal is divided into four chapters:

Chapter 1 contains this Executive Summary.

Chapter 2 contains the Technical Proposal.

Chapter 3 contains the Management Proposal.

Chapter 4 contains the Financial and Contractual proposal.

Detailed Curriculum Vitae of the Key Personnel are provided in Annex A to the Management Proposal.

ESA PSS forms are provided as an Annex A to the Financial and Contractual Proposal.

Assumptions and critical issues

The only assumption of this proposal is that ESA shall not modify its data distribution policy throughout the duration of the project, concerning the availability free of charge of ERS and ENVISAT SAR data, subject to the acceptance of a Category 1 proposal.

The proposal does not contain any critical issue. It contains however several technical challenges, the nature and proposed approach to which is discussed at length in the Technical Proposal. Failure to meet any of the technical challenges would not compromise the feasibility of the proposed study, since the workflow is organized not to depend exclusively on steps of uncertain outcome. On the contrary, any successfully handled technical challenged shall provided an added value to the outcome of the study and to other ongoing studies in this field.