UCC Research Profiles: cpratola@ucc.ie, Environmental Research Institute

Contact Details

Postdoctoral Researcher
Eri
University College Cork
Cork
Ireland

T: +353-21-490-3000
E: cpratola@ucc.ie

Chiara Pratola joined the Coastal and Marine Research Centre (CMRC) in June 2012 as research assistant on the ESA Soil Moisture Climate Change Initiative. She is contributing to the validation of global soil moisture products as determined from satellite data, focusing her work on the identification of the most suitable methods to retrieve soil moisture from ENVISAT ASAR images.

Since March 2013 she is also providing her expertise in Remote Sensing for Maritime Security applications, working in the ESA funded ANISTIAMO project at CMRC. Her main task is to develop ship detection algorithms by using various types of SAR images.

In 2005 Chiara received a BSc in Environmental Engineering at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy. In 2008 she completed an MSc at the Earth Observation Laboratory of the University of Tor Vergata, working with very high resolution (VHR) optical images (QuickBird) applying neural network models for the development of a neural network- based automatic technique to classify VHR optical satellite images.

In November 2013 Chiara received the PhD title in geo-information at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. Her research investigated the possible applications of VHR X-band COSMO-SkyMed images on the type and amount of exploitable information for object extraction (buildings and roads), and automatic identification of different land uses and monitoring of changes in a sub-urban environment. Part of her research was undertaken through the CAMLAND project (Computer Assisted Monitoring of Land cover and its Changes), which was partially funded by the Italian Space Agency ASI.

	Year	Publication
	(2015)	'Quality assessment of the CCI ECV Soil Moisture product using ENVISAT ASAR Wide Swath Data over Spain, Ireland and Finland' Pratola, C.; Barrett, B.; Gruber, A.; Kiely, G.; Dwyer. E (2015) 'Quality assessment of the CCI ECV Soil Moisture product using ENVISAT ASAR Wide Swath Data over Spain, Ireland and Finland'. Remote Sensing, 7 (11):15388-15423 [DOI] [Details]
	(2014)	'Evaluation of a global soil moisture product from finer spatial resolution SAR data and ground measurements in Irish sites' Pratola, C.; Barrett, B.; Gruber, A.; Kiely, G.; Dwyer. E (2014) 'Evaluation of a global soil moisture product from finer spatial resolution SAR data and ground measurements in Irish sites'. Remote Sensing, [Details]
	(2013)	'Toward Fully Automatic Detection of Changes in Suburban Areas From VHR SAR Images by Combining Multiple Neural-Network Models' Chiara Pratola, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2013) 'Toward Fully Automatic Detection of Changes in Suburban Areas From VHR SAR Images by Combining Multiple Neural-Network Models'. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 51 (4):2055-2066 [DOI] [Details]
	(2012)	'PCNN for automatic segmentation and information extraction from X-band SAR imagery' Del Frate, F.; Latini, D.; Pratola, C.; Palazzo, F. (2012) 'PCNN for automatic segmentation and information extraction from X-band SAR imagery'. 4 (1):75-88 [DOI] [Details]

Conference Publications

	Year	Publication
	(2012)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Miguel Penalver, Chiara Pratola, Irene Fabrini, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2012) Classification of PingPong COSMO-SkyMed imagery using supervised and unsupervised neural network algorithms Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Munich, Germany, , 22-JUL-12 - 27-JUL-12 , pp.5888-5891 [DOI] [Details]
	(2012)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Chiara Pratola, Giorgio Licciardi, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2012) Fusion of VHR multispectral and X-band SAR data for the enhancement of vegetation maps Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Munich, Germany, , 22-JUL-12 - 27-JUL-12 , pp.6793-6796 [DOI] [Details]
	(2012)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Giorgio Licciardi, ChiaraPratola, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2012) Fusion of Radarsat-2 and cosmo-skymed polarimetric images to improve land cover classification Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International Munich, Germany, , 22-JUL-12 - 27-JUL-12 , pp.4978-4981 [DOI] [Details]
	(2011)	Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), 2011 Joint Chiara Pratola, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2011) Characterizing land cover from X-band COSMO-SkyMed images by neural networks Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), 2011 Joint Munich, Germany, , 11-APR-11 - 13-APR-11 , pp.49-52 [DOI] [Details]
	(2011)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2011 IEEE International Fabio Del Frate, Chiara Pratola, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2011) Automatic features extraction in sub-urban landscape using very high resolution Cosmo-Skymed SAR images Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2011 IEEE International Vancouver, BC, , 24-JUL-11 - 29-JUL-11 , pp.3614-3617 [DOI] [Details]
	(2011)	Ka and Broadband Communications,Navigation and Earth Observation Conference Chiara Pratola, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2011) Automatic monitoring of land cover in sub-urban areas by x-band VHR COSMO-SkyMed imagery Ka and Broadband Communications,Navigation and Earth Observation Conference Palermo, Italy, [Details]
	(2010)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2010 IEEE International Chiara Pratola, Marco Del Greco, Fabio Del Frate, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2010) Towards fully automatic generation of land cover maps from polarimetric and metric-resolution SAR data Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2010 IEEE International Honolulu, HI, , 25-JUL-10 - 30-JUL-10 , pp.3102-3105 [DOI] [Details]
	(2010)	SPIE Remote Sensing 2010 Del Frate, F.; Loschiavo, D.; Pratola, C.; Schiavon, G.; Solimini, D. (2010) Sub-urban landscape characterization by very-high resolution X-band COSMO-SkyMed SAR images: first results SPIE Remote Sensing 2010 Toulouse, France, , 20-SEP-10 - 23-SEP-10 [DOI] [Details]
	(2010)	SPIE Remote Sensing Del Frate, F.; Latini, D.; Pratola, C. (2010) Automatic object extraction from VHR satellite SAR images using pulse coupled neural networks SPIE Remote Sensing Toulouse, France, , 20-SEP-10 - 23-SEP-10 [DOI] [Details]
	(2009)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium,2009 IEEE International,IGARSS 2009 Fabio Del Frate, Giorgio Licciardi, Fabio Pacifici, Chiara Pratola, Domenico Solimini (2009) Pulse Coupled Neural Network for automatic features extraction from COSMO-Skymed and TerraSAR-X imagery Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium,2009 IEEE International,IGARSS 2009 Cape Town, , 12-JUL-09 - 17-JUL-09 , pp.III-384-III-38 [DOI] [Details]
	(2009)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium,2009 IEEE International,IGARSS 2009 Giorgio Licciardi, Chiara Pratola, Fabio Del Frate (2009) Completely automatic classification of satellite multi-spectral imagery for the production of land cover maps Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium,2009 IEEE International,IGARSS 2009 Cape Town, , 12-JUL-09 - 17-JUL-09 , pp.IV-109-IV-112 [DOI] [Details]
	(2008)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International Giorgio Licciardi, Cosimo Putignano, Fabio Del Frate, Chiara Pratola (2008) Tasseled Tap Transformation and Neural Networks for the Design of an Optimum Image Classification Algorithm using Multispectral Data Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International Boston, MA, , 07-JUL-08 - 11-JUL-08 , pp.IV - 723-IV - 726 [DOI] [Details]
	(2008)	Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International Alessandro Burini, Cosimo Putignano, Fabio Del Frate, Giorgio Licciardi, Chiara Pratola, Giovanni Schiavon, Domenico Solimini (2008) TerraSAR-X/SPOT-5 Fused Images for Supervised Land Cover Classification Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International Boston, MA, , 07-JUL-08 - 11-JUL-08 , pp.V - 373-V - 376 [DOI] [Details]

Professional Activities

Conference Contributions

	Year	Publication
	(2015)	Irish Earth Observation Symposium, C. Pratola, B. Barrett, A. Gruber, E. Dwyer (2015) Analysis of the temporal and spatial representativity of the ESA Climate Change Initiative Soil Moisture (CCI-SM) product at Irish sites. [Poster Presentation], Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Galway , 21-OCT-15 - 22-OCT-15. [Details]
	(2015)	Irish Earth Observation Symposium, C. Pratola, C. O’ Mahony, B. Hannah, A. Watkins, P. Kiernan, S. Maloney, N. O’Brien (2015) Addressing New challenges In Satellite based mariTIme surveillance and Arctic Monitoring (ANISTIAMO) project supporting maritime traffic monitoring in Ireland. [Oral Presentation], Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Galway , 21-OCT-15 - 22-OCT-15. [Details]
	(2014)	Irish Earth Observation Symposium, C. Pratola, Y. Wu, C. O’ Mahony, N. Dwyer, B. Hannah, A. Watkins, P. Kiernan (2014) A new satellite based system for Atlantic and Irish Maritime Surveillance. [Oral Presentation], Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland , 30-OCT-14 - 31-OCT-14. [Details]
	(2013)	ESA Living Planet Symposium, Pratola, C.; Dwyer. E.; Barrett, B.; Gruber, A. (2013) Error characterization of the Soil Moisture ECV product over Europe. [Oral Presentation], ESA Living Planet Symposium, Edinburgh, UK , 09-SEP-13 - 13-SEP-13. [Details]
	(2013)	Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Pratola, C.; Barrett, B.; Dwyer. E (2013) Assessment of a global soil moisture product by using finer spatial resolution SAR data and in situ measurements. [Oral Presentation], Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Dublin, Ireland , 24-OCT-13 - 25-OCT-13. [Details]
	(2012)	Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Pratola, C.; Barrett, B.; Dwyer. E (2012) Improving the understanding of a new global soil moisture product using SAR data. [Oral Presentation], Irish Earth Observation Symposium, Dublin, Ireland , 01-NOV-12 - 02-NOV-12. [Details]
	(2010)	SEASAR 2010, Del Frate, F.; Latini, D.; Pratola, C. (2010) Pulse Coupled Neural Network for automatic oil spill detection from satellite SAR images. [Oral Presentation], SEASAR 2010, Frascati, Rome, Italy , 25-JAN-10 - 29-JAN-10. [Details]
	(2009)	POLinSAR 2009, Del Frate, F.; Del Greco, M.; Pratola, C.; Putignano, C.; Solimini, D. (2009) Fully Automatic Land Cover Maps Generation Using Polarimetric SAR data. [Poster Presentation], POLinSAR 2009, Frascati, Rome, Italy , 26-JAN-09 - 30-JAN-09. [Details]
	(2009)	ESA – EUSC - JRC Image Information Mining: automation of geospatial intelligence from Earth Observation, Del Frate, F.; Pratola, C. (2009) Buildings extraction from very high resolution SAR images using Pulse Coupled Neural Network. [Oral Presentation], ESA – EUSC - JRC Image Information Mining: automation of geospatial intelligence from Earth Observation, Madrid, Spain , 03-NOV-09 - 05-NOV-09. [Details]
	(2008)	XIV Riunione Annuale CeTeM / V Workshop AIT / XIV Giornata MECSA sull’Ingegneria delle Microonde, Del Frate, F.; Lazzarini, M.; Licciardi, G.; Putignano, C.; Pratola, C. (2008) Una procedura completamente automatica per la classificazione di immagini satellitari. [Oral Presentation], XIV Riunione Annuale CeTeM / V Workshop AIT / XIV Giornata MECSA sull’Ingegneria delle Microonde, Rome, Italy , 23-OCT-08 - 24-OCT-08. [Details]

Employment

Employer	Position	From / To
Coastal and Marine Research Centre, UCC	Research Assistant	01-JUN-12 / 31-MAY-14
Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy	Risearch Assistant	01-NOV-10 / 30-JUN-12
Italian Ministry of Environment	Database manager	01-OCT-08 / 31-OCT-10
Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy	Research Assistant	01-JUN-08 / 31-OCT-08
Coastal and Marine Research Centre, UCC	Beaufort Post Doctoral Researcher	01-JUN-14 /

Education

Year	Institution	Qualification	Subject
2013	Tor Vergata University, Rome	PHD	Geoinformation
2008	Tor Vergata University, Rome	MSc	Environmental Engineering, Remote Sensing specialization
2005	Tor Vergata University, Rome	BSC	Environmental Engineering

Languages

	Language	Reading	Writing	Speaking
	Italian	Fluent	Fluent	Fluent
	English	Fluent	Fluent	Fluent

Journal Activities

Journal	Role	To / From
Ieee Transactions On Geoscience And Remote Sensing	Referee	-
International Journal Of Applied Earth Observation And Geoinformation	Referee	-
Ieee Journal Of Selected Topics In Applied Earth Observations And Remote Sensing	Referee	-