Dr. Alessandro Ferretti

Title of the tutorial

Introduction into SAR Interferometry and Persistent Scatterer InSAR

Biography

Born in 1968 in Milan, Alessandro Ferretti graduated cum laude in electronic engineering in 1993 at the Politecnico di Milano. He received his MSc. in information technology from CEFRIEL in Milan, working on digital signal processing, in 1993 and his PhD in electrical engineering, from the Politecnico di Milano, in July 1997. His research interests include radar data processing, optimization algorithms, data fusion and use of remote sensing information for oil&gas and Civil Protection applications. He joined the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) group of the Politecnico di Milano in 1994 and started working with professors Fabio Rocca and Claudio Prati on the generation of digital elevation models from satellite radar images.

After devoting most of his research efforts to multi-temporal SAR data stacks at the Department of Electronics, he, together with professors Rocca and Prati, developed the “Permanent Scatterer Technique” (PSInSAR™), a technology patented in 1999 aimed to overcome most of the difficulties related to conventional analyses, providing millimetre accuracy surface deformation measurements from satellite radar data.

Alessandro Ferretti is co-inventor of the algorithm SqueeSAR™ (2009), a second-generation PSInSAR™ analysis. He is member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. In June 2012, together with Prof. Fabio Rocca, he has been awarded the “ENI Award 2012” for the potential impact of the PSInSAR™ technology on the oil&gas sector.

Since March 2014 he is lecturer of the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE – EET9 course). For EAGE Dr. Ferretti has recently published the book: “Satellite InSAR Data – Reservoir Monitoring from Space”.

In March 2000 he cofounded, together with professors Rocca and Prati, the company “Tele-Rilevamento Europa” (TRE) the most successful InSAR company, offering high-quality surface deformation data for many different applications, from oil/gas reservoir surveillance, to landslide monitoring. In May 2016 TRE has been merged with Altamira Information and today Alessandro Ferretti is leading the TRE ALTAMIRA group, a CLS company.