Development of an operational infrastructure monitoring service for predictive maintenance based on Rheticus Safeway

Ground motion phenomena can cause serious damage to infrastructures and the environment, and it represents a risk for the citizens. Landslides may destroy roads, and railways, even causing victims. In recent years, the continuous growth of the intensity and frequency of extreme natural phenomena has been observed, and there is a clear relationship between both human activities and climate change. <br/> <br/> Planetek Italia, with GAP, is developing an operational infrastructure monitoring service to support predictive maintenance of roads, railways, and bridges. The initiative, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under the I4DP Market project, targets providing a comprehensive solution aligned with the guidelines for risk classification, safety assessment, and monitoring of existing bridges, as outlined by the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. <br/> <br/> The proposed operational service builds upon the existing Rheticus Safeway, developed by Planetek within the Horizon 2020 Safeway project concluded in February 2022. The enhancements and adaptations, performed during the ASI project encompass operational and technological aspects, to democratise and scale the service to a European and global level. The service will be based on ground motion data derived from multitemporal satellite interferometry algorithms, primarily leveraging SAR Sentinel-1 (S-1) and COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) data, alongside change detection from multispectral satellite Sentinel-2 (S-2) data. <br/> <br/> To ensure the service's generalizability, scalability, and availability across various levels of detail, the European Ground Motion Service (EMGS) of Copernicus is proposed as a baseline service for ground motion monitoring accessible throughout the European Union. An additional service tier with higher temporal and spatial resolution is foreseen to provide updates on-demand, based on SAR COSMO-SkyMed and Sentinel-1 data processing to derive the ground motion map and the Sentinel-2 to identify the land cover changes. <br/> <br/> The adoption of this operational infrastructure monitoring service will mark a significant step towards efficient and proactive maintenance strategies, leveraging satellite-based geo-analytics information to ensure the safety and resilience of roads and railways infrastructure networks on a broader scale.