Overview
Tele-Rilevemento Europa - TRE - is a new model for creating business in Italy in which excellence in the field of research is transferred to a cutting edge, high-tech industry.
Established in March 2000, TRE is the first spin-off company of the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI). Hence, TRE is the commercial vehicle through which the application of the PSInSAR™ technique – patented by POLIMI – is marketed and delivered to public and private sector customers.
The PSInSAR™ technique is a unique tool that detects, measures and monitors different geophysical phenomena (e.g. subsidence, uplift, landslides, seismic faults, etc.) and verifies the stability of individual structures, providing precise measurements of displacements.
History
Our company originates from the SAR research group of the Department for Electronics and Information at POLIMI
In 1985, the “SAR” group at POLIMI, headed by Professors Fabio Rocca and Claudio Prati, commenced investigations into the availability of data from SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar). At that time, the only data available were acquired by the American satellite SEASAT and were used to study the potential of SAR interferometry to generate Digital Elevation Model(DEM) and surface deformation maps.
The European Space Agency (ESA) launched its first SAR sensor, on board the satellite ERS-1, in May 1991. In so doing, a significant quantity of data was being generated with which to verify what, to that point, had been only theory.
First of all, in August of the same year the SAR group, making use of ERS-1 data, developed new interferometric method which led to a patent registered by ESA in USA. At the same time, the ability of the system to measure ground movements with centimetre precision were being evaluated.
In 1995 ESA launched ERS-2, which overlapped with ERS-1. The SAR group requested that ESA linked the two spacecrafts in the first ever 'tandem' mission which lasted for nine months. During this time the two satellites travelled on the same orbit, separated by a 24 hour interval, providing a unique opportunity to observe changes over a short time interval. The resulting reduction in decorrelation intensified the study of ground movement.
Between 1996 and 1997, Alessandro Ferretti joined the group and undertook two significant multi-image analysis research projects of: the slow-moving Ancona landslide and the compacting of lava flows on the slopes of Mount Etna. These two projects revealed that it was possible to measure the displacement of radar benchmarks, also referred to as Permanent Scatterers (PS), to millimetre accuracy.
In May 1999, POLIMI registered a patent for the PS Technique.
In March 2000, POLIMI created TRE to apply this cutting-edge technology to the commercial sector.
Since the beginnings, when it was made up of seven people, TRE's staff has costantly grown and nowadays it counts twenty-two professionals, mainly engineers in electronic and telecommunications graduated at POLIMI.
