“Costa Concordia” tragedy – ship
displacement monitoring system
On 13/01/2012 at Giglio island a 400 long ship “Costa Concordia” having about 4000
people on board shipwrecked. Since then, it has been constantly moving downward the sea
bottom. Additionally, the unusual ship position, the weather conditions and the rescue
operations impose on the construction additional forces, not taken into consideration in its
engineering design, which may consequently jeopardize the rescue teams and the
environment. Aiming maximal safety of the rescue operations, continuous monitoring of the
ship displacement has been launched. This tragedy results to analysis about the preparation
and the possibility of adequate crisis reactions. The presentation reveals the ship
displacement monitoring system, putting into practice MIMO radar interferometer – a
scientific work of the Joint Research Centre - Italy and personal impressions of the ship
rescue activities
Protezione civile
-Displacement bulletin /every 12h, next 24/
- Emergency monitoring in dangerous situations
/every 2h/
pompieri
Monitoring center
Guardia di
finanza
Private
companies
army
Mutual funds
Guardia foresteria
volunteers
insurances
Greenpeace
press
The only one experimental device
1
1
Phase interferogram,
displacement vs. the
reference point
m
internet
n
target
CW chirp, 2sm wavelength, 2sec acquisition
Full Remote control and
monitoring
reference
Major Faced problems
“on line” programming
-Fast programming on various task,
Rapid
prototyping
-Continuously changing requirements
-Bug fix
-Changing something in
the hw, requires changing
the software
-Physical reinforcement
-Writing/changing own standards
-New signal processing
-Computational problems
results
presentation to
the end user
Team work
Visibility
-press
-papers
-presentations
-24h stand by
-Solving problems without team
information 
-Resource sharing everybody
helps with cameras, internet,
information about the typical
wind conditions etc.
From -…… - TO
No time, everything calculated on hand and by eye 
Scatterer at x= -35, y= 233, Ciminiera alta
5
4
3
Displacement (mm)
2
End user happy , clear
visibility
1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4
x 10
Scatterer at x= -35, y= 234, Funnel (top)
5
4
3
Displacement (mm)
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
19:25 20:25 21:41 22:40 23:41 00:41 01:40 02:38 03:36 04:34 05:31 06:28 07:25
Data format changing, new software, ,
Title of figure, points of observation 