DIFFRACTED WAVES FROM THE AGROUND COSTA CONCORDIA CRUISE AND DETECTED BY THE REMOCEAN SYSTEM F. Serafino 1 , G. Ludeno ,2,3 ,C. Lugni 4 ,A. Natale 1 ,D.Arturi 2,5 , C. Brandini 6 , F. Soldovieri 1 1. Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, National Research Council, Via Diocleziano 328, Napoli, I-80124 Italy (serafino.f@irea.cnr.it, ludeno.g@irea.cnr.it, soldovieri.f@irea.cnr.it) 2. Vitrociset S.p.a. Via Tiburtina, 1020 - 00156 Rome – Italy e-mail: g.ludeno.cons@vitrociset.it, d.arturi.cons@vitrociset.it 3. Second University of Naples, Industrial and Information Engineering Department, Via Roma 29, 81031 Aversa Italy (ludeno.g@irea.cnr.it) 4. CNR-INSEAN Maritime Research Institute, National Research Council, claudio.lugni@cnr.it, Via di Vallerano,139, Roma, I-00128 Italy: (e-mail: c.lugni@insean.it) 5. University of Studies "Mediterranea" of Reggio Calabria, college of Telecommunication Engineering, Information Engineering Department, Via Graziella - Loc. Feo di Vito, RC, 89124 (arturi.d@irea.cnr.it) 6. CNR-IBIMET, Biometeorology Institute, Via Caproni, 8, Firenze, I-50145 Italy, e-mail c.brandini@ibimet.cnr.it ABSTRACT REMOCEAN is a remote sensing system for the wave and current monitoring, based on a nautical X-Band radar, usually deployed for navigation and ship traffic control. Here, we present the results obtained by the analysis of the data collected by the Remocean system, installed in the port of Giglio Island, during the storm of the 27 November 2012. For this test case, the effectiveness of the Remocean wave height reconstruction has been evaluated by analyzing the spectral slope and the statistical properties of the ocean waves and comparing them with independent measures provided by a buoy installed in the proximity the ‘Costa Concordia’ shipwreck. Index Terms— sea state monitoring, X-band radar data, coastal areas, surface current 1. INTRODUCTION The exploitation of wave radar systems for sea state monitoring in operative conditions is quickly growing; in fact, small size, low weight and easiness of installation allow the use on a fixed platform (offshore or costal platform) or on a ship, where the requirements about temporal and spatial resolution of the sea surface images become demanding[1-2]. The validation of the REMOCEAN system has been already assessed in the case of coastal monitoring [3], where the radar was installed onshore and the main emphasis was given to the comparison of the REMOCEAN sea surface current estimates with the measurements provided by a HF radar system. In the present work, the validation of the Remocean system is carried out by analysing the data collected at the Giglio Island during the storm of the 27 November 2012. The wave radar is installed in the port of Giglio Island., with the aim to monitor the sea state parameters as support to the removal operations of the ship „Costa Concordia‟; Costa Concordia ran aground on the island on January 2012 and it represents one of the biggest passengers shipwrecks in recent history. In particular, the work is focused on the 3-D (space- time) reconstruction of the sea surface in order to demonstrate the capability of the system to detect a particular sea pattern as the one associated to the waves diffracted by the shipwreck. The validation consists in evaluating the spectral slope and the statistical properties of the ocean waves, in order to establish if the reconstruction is consistent and if it has a physical meaning. Furthermore, the characteristic sea state parameters, as wave direction θ and wave period T of dominant wave, have been compared with the measurements provided by a buoy placed in proximity of the ship wreck. Therefore, the paper is organized as follows. The Section 2 presents the REMOCEAN system by focusing to the data processing. The measurement campaign is presented in detail in Section 3 and the comparison and analysis are presented in Section 4. Finally, conclusions follow. 2. DATA PROCESSING APPROACH The data processing approach to extract the characteristic sea state parameters (such as wave direction, wavelength, 1618 978-1-4799-1114-1/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE IGARSS 2013