The COHECO project led by the Puglia Region proposed the development of an innovative multi-platform environmental monitoring system based on the automatic integration and analysis of multi-scale, multi-temporal and multi-spectral data from satellite, aircraft and unguided vehicles. for men with data from ground sensors such as laser scanners and GPS.
The monitoring system, tested in protected areas of the Natura 2000 network, is able to support the expeditious assessment of the conservation status of habitats and ecosystems, the assessment of the geomorphological danger of coastal areas of particular landscape and tourist interest, the validation in time of the effectiveness of the policies adopted to favor the state of conservation of nature and the economic development of the territory.
Following the analysis, integration and data fusion processes, a support WebGIS information system was implemented.
The monitoring of the conservation status of habitats and ecosystems is based in Italy almost exclusively on very expensive land campaigns that require the use of many people and time. While you can never do without ground reference data, monitoring from remoto (satellite, aircraft, drone) effectively contributes to reducing the costs of ground campaigns in sites that are too large or not easily accessible. The availability of free satellite data, freely usable with the Copernicus program, is of substantial importance for the purposes of environmental monitoring but is linked to the absence of cloud cover at the time of the passage of the satellite. The integration with data acquired from platforms and airborne detection sensors (aircraft and drone) completes the dataset obtainable only from satellite with more detailed information and acquired with suitable weather-environmental conditions. The execution of multi-platform monitoring campaigns (satellite, plane, drone, field) and the development of integration and analysis methodologies of all the different acquired data allows to obtain information to support the knowledge and management of the territory of the areas protected and to be protected.
CNR-IIA is among the partners of the project led by the Puglia Region, together with CNR-IBBR, CNR-IAC, CNR-IRPI, AESEI, Ambiente SpA, Eulogic, Quadrum, Security And Quality.