Follow-up: Space 4 Critical Infrastructure webinar on Wastewater and drinking water on 24th November 2022
NEREUS and Eurisy organize the series “Space 4 Critical Infrastructures” focused on eleven sectors identified in the proposed EU Directive on the resilience of critical entities. Climate change results in increasingly frequent water scarcity and drought. The protection of water resources is one of the cornerstones of Europe’s environmental policy. The European space data stream provides multiple opportunities to make our water use more efficient. This seventh thematic session of “Space 4 Critical Infrastructures” showcased examples such as mapping water infrastructure and detecting underground leakages.
Andrea Aliscioni, the Director of the public entity of Metropolitana Milanese, highlighted how Sentinel-1 data are used to support the management and maintenance of the public sewerage network in Milano. In this respect, the first part of his use case was presented through the Copernicus4regions video developed by NEREUS. Further, Mr Aliscioni referred to the complex underground infrastructure of the sewerage network in Milan with large sewer pipes (extent: 1560km) and the challenge of its stability monitoring of water and wastewater networks and other structural issues. The technical solution used is the Sentinel-1-based digital platform Rheticus® developed by Planetek Italia, which detects monthly subsidence over the city including roads and pipes. In response to some questions, Mr. Aliscioni indicated that this solution had a pioneering role and attracted the attention of other regions, such as Emilia Romagna. There was an update to this Copernicus4regions story given that the solution is consolidated at a high UML 5 (link).
Representatives of the private sector shared their use cases on drinking water and wastewater explaining why satellite solutions reinforce the protection of water resources. Mr Enrico Schiesaro, the market development manager of Neptune Srl-Cosmic Water Leaks, presented its space-based solution for identifying water leakages on any type of pipeline and distribution networks. Mr Schiesaro introduced the global problem of water leaks and its difficulty to replace the whole water network. Therefore, specialised operators used traditional solutions, such as the acoustic method. However, given their limitations, combined with new methods including satellite data and analysis, it was made possible to detect leakages. Installing a cosmic rays detector on a moving vehicle was feasible to dynamically map the water leaks. Discussing with the panel, he outlined that introducing new space technologies is one of the challenges related to the commercialisation of space. However, since the company is a Cosmic’s spin-off, there was already a sustainable network of interested parties.
Next, remote specialists, Mr. Damien Barache from L3Harris Geospatial solutions and Ms Giulia Tessari from SARMAP SA.Water_Infrastructures, presented an operational Sentinel-1 monitoring system for a water facility in Hungary. Continuous monitoring of a country’s aging water management infrastructure has become an urgent issue in the last few years. Mr. Barache highlighted that the ENVI SARscape solution developed by SARMAP supports Sentinel-1 products by taking the data from hard-to-interpret numbers and turning it into meaningful, contextual information. Ms Tessari described the time-effective service outlining that InSAR applications allow retrieving small displacements and the temporal evolution of the deformation rates over sensitive infrastructures, such as pipelines. Regarding the uptake of this technical solution addressed to organisations, such as ministries, Ms Tessari responded that the solution is tailor-made to the customer’s needs including the provision of software and training sessions. In conclusion, all agreed that the final user should be part of the solution.
The webinar was moderated by Annalisa Donati, EURISY Secretary General, and hosted more than 100 registered participants. The next webinar on “Digital Infrastructure and Health” will take place beginning in 2023.
2022, Events, News, Space4CriticalInfrastructures
Events – NEREUS | NEREUS Read More
