NHAZCA
Natural HAZards Control and Assessment
Italy
Description of the entity:
NHAZCA (Natural HAZards Control and Assessment) is a Spin-off Company of “Sapienza" University of Rome, international leader in the analysis and monitoring of natural hazards and large infrastructures for the management and mitigation of risks.
NHAZCA provides specialized consultancies in the geological, geotechnical and civil engineering fields through innovative remote sensing techniques, developed also through the collaboration with CERI (Research Centre of “Sapienza" University of Rome), IMG S.r.l. (co-founder) and prestigious entities such as the European Space Agency (ESA).
NHAZCA is a reference partner for entities and companies in charge of land and urban planning, civil protection, oil & gas, mining, large infrastructures and conservation of the architectural and monumental heritage.
Our main solutions are:
- Risk Assessment
- Geotechnical Monitoring
- Structural Health Monitoring
- Early Warning Systems
- Geological Design
- Engineering Design
Contribution to the Work Plan and expertise brought to ENOS:
NHAZCA is involved in:
WP3 Managing leakage risks for protection of the environment and groundwater
- Task 3.2 Understanding risk of CO2 migration through faults and boreholes for effective monitoring.
- WP7 Spreading innovation for Research integration and Best practices
Specifically, NHAZCA aims to provide an analysis of the ground deformations induced by the activities for the storage of carbon dioxide, by a pioneering integration of space, aerial and ground-based remote sensing technologies. By the achieved results, it will be possible to identify pros and cons of the different technologies and to design a suitable technical protocol (in terms of costs and benefits) to be adopted in similar applications.
Interferometric analyses will be performed by high resolution satellite SAR images (available from the Space Agencies archives) in order to investigate both the historical ground deformation (i.e. 2010-2015) of the test site area and those deriving from the storage activity in the near future (both in uplift and subsidence) with millimetric accuracy. Specifically, for a comprehensive characterization of the phenomenon during injection phases, corner reflectors (i.e. passive devices allowing the optimal backscatter of the radar signal emitted by the satellite) will be installed in the test area on a regular grid in order to achieve high resolution displacement information. RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems) will be also used to perform local-scale surveys, to be integrated with the satellite SAR data and to perform multi-temporal digital image correlation for the detection of ground deformation. Such integration represents an interesting improvement respect to the state of art in the field of remote sensing techniques applied to Oil&Gas issues.
During the storage operation, a continuous topographic monitoring by automatic total station will be also performed in order to correlate the ground deformation to the injection activities.
Such integrated approach represents an accurate and comprehensive control system of the CO2 injections both at local and regional (some km2) scale, thus fitting with the main objectives of the project (i.e. developing, testing and demonstrating in the field, under “real-life conditions”, key technologies specifically adapted to onshore contexts).
Via Vittorio Bachelet 12, 00185 Rome,
