The second webinar on “Space 4 Critical Infrastructures” organised on the 26th of April shed light on what can be considered as critical infrastructure and on specific satellite-based technologies currently used by the competent bodies dealing with monitoring and maintenance. The collapse of the Morandi bridge opened a European wide reflection on how to modernise the current monitoring of critical infrastructures. Concrete measures and practices were shared during the webinar, with special emphasis on operational satellite services to support relevant entities with the maintenance of viaducts, tunnels, and highways. The event attracted more than 80 registered participants from a diverse audience: public administrations, companies and SMEs, space agencies, space associations, universities, research centres, etc.
Views from the Liguria municipality following the reconstruction of the Morandi Bridge
Matteo Campora, Councilor for Transport, Mobility, and Environment of the Genoa Municipality, outlined the numerous socioeconomic effects of the collapse of the Morandi bridge and stressed the need of adopting practices for an improved management of the resilience of critical infrastructures. For example, Genoa adopted in 2019 “Genova Lighthouse”, a sustainable and resilience strategy favouring the use of enabling technologies including satellite applications for the management of logistics and transport, and the prevention of incidents.
Rheticus Safeway: preventing incidents over the entire road and bridge network at a long term
Giuseppe Forenza Business Development Manager at Planetek Italia, presented Rheticus Safeway, a Copernicus-based space data tool to monitor roads infrastructure and bridges. In support of his presentation, participants had the chance to learn about the Anas use case on the activation of the Rheticus Safeway to monitor the stability of Italian roads and highways.
Download here the presentation (link).
Multi-temporal satellite DInSAR techniques for the monitoring of the built-up environment
Simona Verde and Manuela Bonano permanent researchers of the Italian National Research Centre provided the audience with a comprehensive overview of how multi-temporal satellite data can help to monitor over time the deformation affecting man-made structures and built-up environment over large areas with sub-centimetric accuracy.
Download here the presentation (link).
Key outcomes and next webinar on the 24th of May 2022
After the presentations, questions from the audience sparked a lively debate emphasising the following key points: a) To facilitate the adoption of satellite solutions for the maintenance of critical infrastructure, the internal processes and specific challenges of the end user should be understood. This needs to be reflected in a user friendly design of the solution. b) Satellite data used to monitor trends overtime in combination with complementary observations (in-situ data) can support the prevention of infrastructure incidents c) The importance of space data uptake to tackle similar challenges has been widely supported and recognised as an indispensable solution for regional authorities.
This webinar was part of the introductory online sessions presenting the state of play of the legislative process and the rationale behind the enlargement of the scope of the proposed EU Directive on the resilience of critical entities. A set of thematic webinars will be organised to illustrate operational solutions. The thematic sessions will cover the different sectors following the enlargement of the scope of the directive and will further demonstrate which kind of satellite-based services EU member states have at their disposal to boost the resilience of their critical entities.
The third webinar “Putting the EC-proposal into action” will take place on 24 May 2022, 10.00-11.00 CEST.
Watch the full webinar here:
