Title
The COSMO-SkyMed Constellation Monitors the Costa Concordia Wreck
Abstract
On 13 January 2012, the Italian vessel, Costa Concordia, wrecked offshore Giglio Island, along the coast of Tuscany (Italy). The ship partially sunk, lying on the starboard side on a 22 degrees steep rocky seabed, making the stability conditions of the ship critically in danger of sliding, shifting and settling. The tilted position of the ship created also pernicious conditions for the divers involved in the search and rescue operations. It became immediately clear that a continuous monitoring of the position and movements of the ship was of paramount importance to guarantee the security of the people working around and within the wreck. Starting from January 19, the Italian constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, COSMO-SkyMed (CSK), was tasked to acquire high resolution images of the wreck. Thanks to CSK's short response and revisiting time and its capability to acquire high resolution images in Spotlight mode, satellite data were integrated within the real time, ground-based monitoring system implemented to provide the civil protection authorities with a regular update on the ship stability. Exploitation of both the phase (satellite radar interferometry, InSAR) and amplitude (speckle tracking) information from CSK images, taken along the acquisition orbit, Enhanced Spotlight (ES)-29, revealed a general movement of the translation of the vessel, consistent with sliding toward the east of the hull on the seabed. A total displacement, with respect to the coastline, of 1666 mm and 345 mm of the bow and stern, respectively, was recorded, over the time period of 19 January-23 March 2012.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.3390/rs6053988
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
Costa Concordia wreck,COSMO-SkyMed,InSAR,speckle tracking,displacement monitoring,risk management,data downstream service
Radar,Satellite,Search and rescue,Interferometric synthetic aperture radar,Synthetic aperture radar,Remote sensing,Ship stability,Stern,Geology,Submarine pipeline
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
6
5
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.45
11
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Federico Raspini1568.14
Sandro Moretti27911.16
Alfio Fumagalli319512.46
Alessio Rucci419210.98
Fabrizio Novali532624.11
Alessandro Ferretti61398253.63
Claudio Prati7952127.94
Nicola Casagli817825.25