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Introduction
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May 2017 - February 2021
September 2015 - January 2017
July 2014 - January 2016
Publications
Publications (177)
Among the fastest sinking cities globally, the metropolitan area of Mexico City is the target of an unprecedented satellite investigation based on over 300 Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometric Wide swath mode scenes acquired in 2014–2020. Two-pass differential Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and the parallelized Small BAseline Subs...
To address increasing water demands in expanding cities, many aquifers in Mexico are overexploited and deplete. The resulting land subsidence often combines with ground faulting/fracturing and damage to infrastructure. This study provides the longest Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) survey ever undertaken for the Aguascalientes Valley, aimed to const...
Correct use of multi-temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) datasets to complement geodetic surveying for geo-hazard applications requires rigorous assessment of their precision and accuracy. Published inter-comparisons are mostly limited to ground displacement estimates obtained from different algorithms belonging to the same fa...
Limited attention is typically paid to the cause-effect relationship between land subsidence due to aquifers overexploitation in expanding metropolises and urban growth models and patterns. This paper implements an integrated urban and satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) approach to investigate subsidence, multi-decadal urban...
Plain Language Summary
Groundwater resources address a large component of water needs worldwide, especially in countries with extensive arid regions, such as Mexico. When aquifers are overexploited in excess of natural recharge, they may lose part of their storage capacity and compact, causing land subsidence. Impacts on urban landscapes, such as s...
In Near and Middle Eastern archaeology, satellite-derived digital elevation models (DEM) of medium spatial resolution (≥30 m) are mostly used to locate and map archaeological mounds (namely ‘tells’), whereas high resolution DEMs (≤10 m) are still poorly exploited. To fill this gap, the 5 m resolution CartoSat-1 Euro-Maps 3D Digital Surface Model (D...
Early-season crop mapping provides decision makers with timely information on crop type and conditions that are crucial for agricultural management. Current satellite-based mapping solutions mainly rely on optical imagery, albeit limited by weather conditions. Very few exploit long time series of polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. To...
Imaging radar has been dramatically developed over the past decades enabling a better understanding of cultural heritage from a microwave perspective. Nonetheless, a dedicated survey and analysis of the performance of such technology in cultural heritage monitoring and management is required. In order to fill this gap, we first review the technolog...
Heterogeneous remote sensing source-based change detection with optical and SAR data and their combined all-time and all-weather observation capability provides a reliable and promising solution for a wide range of applications. State-of-the-art supervised methods typically take a two-stage strategy that suffers from the loss of original image feat...
The exploitation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging is rising higher and higher on the agenda of researchers, professionals and stakeholders working in the field of geomatics, geodesy, surveying, Earth sciences, land management and monitoring.
Through their all-weather and day/night sensing capabilities, range of frequency bands, manifold s...
Volcanic activity may influence climate parameters and impact people safety, and hence monitoring its characteristic indicators and their temporal evolution is crucial. Several databases, communications and literature providing data, information and updates on active volcanoes worldwide are available, and will likely increase in the future. Consequ...
This study aims at estimating the dry snow water equivalent (SWE) by using X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) satellite constellation. The time series of CSK acquisitions have been collected during the dry snow period in the Alto Adige test site, in the Italian Alps, during the winter seasons from 2013 to 2015 an...
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) degassing at Strombolian volcanoes is directly associated with magmatic activity, thus its monitoring can inform about the style and intensity of eruptions. The Stromboli volcano in southern Italy is used as a test case to demonstrate that the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precur...
The aim of this paper is to address the monitoring of the recovery phase in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew (28 September–10 October 2016) in the town of Jérémie, southwestern Haiti. This is accomplished via a novel change detection method that has been formulated, in a data fusion perspective, in terms of multitemporal supervised classification...
“Tells” are archaeological mounds formed by deposition of large amounts of anthropogenic material and sediments over thousands of years and are the most important and prominent features in Near and Middle Eastern archaeological landscapes. In the last decade, archaeologists have exploited free-access global digital elevation model (DEM) datasets at...
In this paper, an algorithm based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) was developed to correctly classify an agricultural area in central Italy, by using SAR images. This preliminary step is vital for mastering the different influence of crop types in SAR data before the implementation of algorithms devoted to estimate of vegetation biomass. In...
By analysing the technical advantages and characteristics of imaging radar in cultural heritage, we provide new insights for the future development of cutting-edge Digital Heritage approaches through technical integration and interdisciplinary synergy.
Satellite technologies are increasingly used to track looting in remote and inaccessible archaeological sites and assess damage to heritage. Evidence gathered in our study proves a growing user uptake of these technologies, beyond the specialist remote sensing community, but also that a more synergistic use of optical and radar data is required. Th...
Wuhan is an important city in central China, with a rapid development that has led to increasingly serious land subsidence over the last decades. Most of the existing Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) subsidence monitoring studies in Wuhan are either short-term investigations—and thus can only detect this process within limited time...
A general framework for the integration of multi-sensor data for dry and fresh biomass retrieval is proposed and tested in Alpine meadows and pastures. To this purpose, hyperspectral spectroradiometer (as simulation of hyperspectral imagery) and biomass samples were collected in field campaigns and Copernicus Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide (IW) sw...
The growing volume of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery acquired by satellite constellations creates novel opportunities and opens new challenges for interferometric SAR (InSAR) applications to observe Earth’s surface processes and geohazards. In this paper, the Parallel Small BAseline Subset (P-SBAS) advanced InSAR processing chain running on...
COSMO-SkyMed (Constellation of Small satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation) is an Italian Earth Observation (EO) and Dual-Use (Civilian and Defense) Space System conceived with the aim to establish a worldwide service providing Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, products and services compliant with well-established international standard...
Geohazards associated with the dynamics of the liquid and solid water of the Earth’s hydrosphere, such as floods and glacial processes, may pose significant risks to populations, activities and properties [...]
The systematic and widespread availability of cheap computing power
and storage space, alongside the drastic improvement in data transmission and active
sensor technologies, has triggered an increasing interest by scientific and government
institutions in the use of satellite data. One of the most promising applications
is to provide emergency mana...
The coastline environment and urban areas of Peru overlooking the Pacific Ocean are among the most affected by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, and its cascading hazards such as floods, landslides and avalanches. In this work, the complete archives of the European Space Agency (ESA)'s European Remote-Sensing (ERS-1/2) missions and Europe...
The Methana volcano in Greece belongs to the western part of the Hellenic Volcanic
Arc, where the African and Eurasian tectonic plates converge at a rate of approximately 3 cm/year. While volcanic hazard in Methana is considered low, the neotectonic basin constituting the Saronic Gulf area is seismically active and there is evidence of local geothe...
Remote sensing data and methods are increasingly being embedded into assessments of volcanic processes and risk. This happens thanks to their capability to provide a spectrum of observation and measurement opportunities to accurately sense the dynamics, magnitude, frequency, and impacts of volcanic activity in the ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS), i...
The instability situation affecting the Middle East poses threats to preservation of cultural heritage. Mapping efforts based on satellite imagery currently concentrate more on recording human-induced damage than impacts of unforeseen natural events (e.g. floods). In 2018, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bosra and the landscape of Sergiopolis-Res...
There is an increasingly growing literature on the use of advanced multi-temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to monitor surface deformation with millimeter precision in urban and rural environments, including applications over wide areas spanning hundreds to thousands of square kilometers. In this work, we survey the eastern s...
Uncontrolled and unregulated urbanization around the modern town of Shahat, Libya, has been reported by several studies as a pressing issue for the conservation of archaeological heritage in the cultural landscape south of Cyrene UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). In this paper, we implemented a big Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data analysis appro...
In the context of the current discussion about Copernicus services for cultural heritage integrating imagery from the Sentinels with those from contributing missions, such as the Italian Space Agency (ASI)'s X-band SAR constellation COSMO-SkyMed, we explore benefits and limitations of a multi-technique and multi-platform approach of change detectio...
Riassunto
I dati satellitari Radar ad Apertura Sintetica (SAR) sono sempre più utilizzati per applicazioni di studio e monitoraggio di beni culturali, mediante analisi multi-temporali basate su tecniche di change detection e interferometria differenziale (DInSAR). COSMO-SkyMed è la costellazione SAR dell’Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, unica al mondo ad...
Vehicle detection from satellite imagery can support different applications, such as security and situational awareness. In the civilian domain, it can provide quantitative evidence to investigate urban mobility and traffic patterns in cities. Satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can help in detecting vehicles in (almost) all weather conditions...
Grasslands cover almost one third of the world's terrestrial surface. In Alpine environments grassland vegetation fulfills various key environmental purposes such as water reservoir, slope stabilizer and carbon sink or fodder for livestock. At the same time Alpine regions are more affected by climatic changes than other geographic zones, potentiall...
Snow cover is a critical geophysical parameter for Earth climate and hydrological systems. It contributes to regulate the Earth surface temperature and represents an important water storage that is slowly released during the melting season and contributes to the river discharge. The parameter that characterizes the hydrological importance of snow c...
Algorithms of amplitude change detection and texture extraction are applied to consistent satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) time series collected by the Italian Space Agency (ASI)’s COSMO-SkyMed constellation over the modern town of Shahat (Libya) and the archaeological site of Apamea (Syria). The high spatial resolution and 16-day revisit t...
Ground stability and surface deformation in the urban areas of Zhengzhou (China), Osaka and Kyoto (Japan), Bogotá (Colombia) and Tunis (Tunisia) are investigated using satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The Parallel Small BAseline Subset (P-SBAS) workflow integrated within ESA’s Grid-Processing On Demand (G-POD) platform is...
The collaborative research project “ALGORITHMS” (2019-2021) between the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Institute of Applied Physics of the National Research Council of Italy (IFAC–CNR) aims to develop innovative algorithms to estimate the main hydrological parameters (e.g. soil moisture content, vegetation properties, snow water equivalent). Th...
Illegal excavations in archaeological heritage sites (namely “looting”) are a global phenomenon. Satellite images are nowadays massively used by archaeologists to systematically document sites affected by looting. In parallel, remote sensing scientists are increasingly developing processing methods with a certain degree of automation to quantify lo...
This paper provides the first wide-area Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) survey of the whole eastern Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (42,200 km2). The aims are to identify ground deformation hotspots within major urbanized areas and rural valleys, establish baselines in geothermal exploration sites, and analyze deformation at geothermal...
El presente trabajo propone una metodología para obtener Modelos Digitales de Elevación (DEMs) por Interferometría de Radar de Apertura Sintética (InSAR) ajustados y validados mediante datos de Sistema Global de Navegación por Satélite (GNSS) medidos en campo. Para la generación de los DEM InSAR se utilizaron imágenes de la misión COSMO-SkyMed de l...
The main objective of this work is to estimate Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) by jointly exploiting the information derived from X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery acquired by the Italian Space Agency COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation in StripMap HIMAGE mode and manual SWE ground measurements. The idea is to verify the sensitivity of the...
In this column, we present a summary of the Third Remote Sensing Spring School at the Teófilo Tabanera Space Center, Córdoba, Argentina, 10–21 September 2018, to support the launch of the Satélite Argentino de Observación con Microondas (SAOCOM) 1A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission. Nearly all of the lecturers were IEEE Geoscience and Remote S...
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery has long been used in archaeology since the earliest space radar missions in the 1980s. In the current scenario of SAR missions, the Italian Space Agency (ASI)’s COnstellation of small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation (COSMO-SkyMed) has peculiar properties that make this mission of potential use...
The MDPI journal Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292, IF 3.406) is currently running the Special Issue "Satellite and Aerial Remote Sensing of Geohazards in Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites" (http://www.mdpi.com/si/18913).
Submission deadline: 31 March 2019.
Special Issue Information: Natural and cultural heritage worldwide often faces geological...
The MDPI journal Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292, IF 3.406) is currently running the Special Issue "Remote Sensing of Volcanic Processes and Risk" (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/rs_vpr).
Submission deadline: 31 January 2019;
Special Issue Information:
Understanding volcanic processes and hazards, assessing the associ...
In this study we present three case studies addressing the combination of optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in integrated landslide mapping by making use of an object-based image analysis (OBIA) framework. For the first test site, located in northern Italy, SPOT-5 imagery was used together with a digital elevation model (DEM) to map l...
Recently, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to relate water levels of a reservoir with its dam displacements. Water levels were determined via remote sensing, while dam displacements were measured via Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Results have shown that displacements and water levels are correlated. Water levels at the Maga...
The “Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa” in Peru are among the most well-known UNESCO World Heritage Sites globally, and an exemplar of site where heritage assets cannot be separated from their natural and anthropogenic environment. The site is exposed to interactions with natural processes, as well as human presence. In this work, 3-m resoluti...
Very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery (≤5 m) is nowadays an established source of information to monitor cultural and archaeological heritage that is exposed to hazards and anthropogenic threats to their conservation, whereas few publications specifically investigate the role that regularly acquired images from high-resolution (HR) s...
This paper provides a step-by-step analysis and discussion of the 'PSI-based matrix approach', a methodology that exploits ground deformation velocities derived through Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) for the assessment of the state of activity and intensity of extremely to very slow landslides. Two matrices based on historical and recent...