Satellite Applications for the Alps

What are satellite applications?

Satellite applications are digital services and products that rely, partly, on data from Earth Observation satellites, satellite navigation satellites (like GPS) and telecommunication satellites.  Other technologies and data sources can be included, even socio-economic indicators, tweets and hashtags, and so on.

Application examples

Geo-information about the built and natural environment (maps), the ability to locate and track objects, and the ability to communicate when terrestrial infrastructures are unavailable or impossible to build, are useful in a number of ways, for instance:

  • safety and rescue missions: locating victims, communicating with them, deciding on the best itineraries to intervene in case of incidents or crisis, coordinating the rescue teams etc.

  • environmental monitoring: monitoring water rise, managing forests, planning urbanization, green and blue corridors, detecting landslides and avalanches, measuring air, soil and water pollution etc.

  • tourism and leisure:  promoting territorial and cultural assets, tourist attractions, leisure activities, ensuring internet broadband connection in remote locations etc.

  • transport and infrastructure: directing the traffic so as to make it more fluid, managing fleets of vehicles , monitoring dangerous goods transport, assessing the quality and risks to the roads (such as subsidence), deciding on where to build the infrastructure with a minimal impact on the environment etc

  • insurance: predicting and assessing risks, assessing the extent of damages from an objective source, enabling ensured people and organisations to avoid risk, pricing insurance policies according to the behavior of the insured, and so on.
  • energy: assessing solar, wind, biomass energy production potential; monitoring infrastructures remotely; measuring snow cover in the mountains and the estimated resulting water available for hydro power production in spring etc.

 Many applications are possible; satellite applications are a great opportunity to innovate and to benefit from innovation.

To see how public authorities and companies use satellite applications, go to Eurisy's database of good practices.