Telecommunications (TLC), Navigation (NAV) and Earth Observation (EO) represent the space sectors with the strongest growth, outstanding to the important spread of applications and services associated to them.
Space-borne data generate information with unique added value in the context of Earth’s surveillance, geohazards mapping and infrastructure monitoring. Furthermore, the integrated implementation of satellite-based services with other multi-source and multi-resolution technologies, including ground-based, aerial and non-destructive sensors, appears to become a crucial step for public and managing bodies in developing tools to assess actual state of civil engineering structures. Therefore, the Italian Space Agency has recently planned specific investments aimed at guaranteeing and improving real-time services, contributing to economic, scientific, technological and sustainable growth of our country. In this context, this work summarizes first outcomes of an ASI’s initiative focused on opportunities for the community operating in the sector of national infrastructures, offered by current supply chain of space systems, services and applications. Scope of this work is to present the main outputs and analyze them, to identify several potential R&D topics related to EO/NAV/TLC applications able to trigger a significant advance to support plan, design, construct and manage civil infrastructures at the network-scale level.
In the framework of ASI’s initiative, administrative authorities and national managers of transport infrastructures were called to present needs and requirements, as well as several on-going research activities and business existing services were considered. Status-of-the-art and gaps are useful to identify requirements of future space infrastructures and services, aimed to effectively support critical infrastructure assets management.
