TVU-DISP EOLab

Both its teaching and research activities make DISP (Department of Computer Science, Systems and Production Engineering) one of the most active departments of the high ranked Tor Vergata University in Rome. The total number of active people exceeds 100, including technical and administrative personnel, contract researchers, and fellowship or scholarship holders.

The Department is essentially interdisciplinary, with groups active in computer science and engineering, control systems, telecommunications, and remote sensing. The remote sensing group, including the Earth Observation Laboratory, which presently includes a permanent staff of 6 professors, 10 PhD students, 2 research associates and several contract and scholarship holders, has carried research on active and passive microwave earth observation since almost 20 years and has published over 250 papers on refereed international journals, books and conference proceedings.

In particular; the group started investigating on the capabilities of Neural Networks (NNs) for the retrieval of ozone concentration more than 10 years ago. The first goal was to design an efficient neural net algorithm for the GOME-1 level 1 data inversion. During this phase the TVU-DISP EOLab was invited to join Ozone retrieval Working Group, coordinated by ESA.

After having developed the neural network algorithm for the estimation of ozone profiles from GOME-1 data the research activity of the group in this field mainly addressed three aspects:

• the optimization of the algorithm especially with respect to the selection of the wavelengths to be used in the input vector,
• an extended validation and assessment of the designed algorithms,
• and the extension of the algorithms and procedures designed for GOME to other speceborne instruments, in particularly to SCIAMACHY and OMI measurements.

In the framework of the OMI activities, TVU is strictly collaborating with the group of Prof. Pawan K. Bhartia, Senior Research Scientist of the Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, USA. Finally, TVU neural scheme for Ozone is one of 10 candidate projects selected by ESA to promote, the use of GRID technologies for the development of earth science applications requiring high data and processing resources.