- The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of goals for sustainable development at the international level (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals). The United Nations Organization conceived and promoted them as global goals for the period 2015-2030. There are 17 objectives and 169 specific targets. Among these, objective 15 includes: the sustainable use of forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing soil degradation, halting the loss of biodiversity.
- The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) signed in 1992 by 150 countries at the Rio de Janeiro summit, is a binding treaty that established a global strategy for sustainable development, based on three main objectives: conservation of biodiversity, its sustainable use, fair and equitable sharing of the benefits deriving from the use of genetic resources.
- The Habitats Directive (92/43 / EEC), together with the Birds Directive (09/147 / EEC), represents the pillar of the community policy for the conservation of nature in response to the CBD and other multilateral environmental agreements. According to Art. 11 of the Directive, Member States are required to ensure the surveillance of the conservation status of the habitats, which are the basic elements of ecosystems, and of the species listed in Annexes I, II, IV and V of the Directive. Monitoring, a tool for implementing this surveillance, is governed by Art. 17, which requires Member States to report every six years on the conservation status of habitats in Natura 2000 sites. In the standard format to be filled in during the reporting phase (2011), information is requested on the extent of each habitat (to which it is biodiversity) in its range, on the structure and functions, on the pressures and threats that induce change. In Italy, reporting is the responsibility of the individual Regions. The contribution of the Regions, coordinated by the Ministry for the Environment, is sent to the Commission which draws up a periodic report on the state of Biodiversity in Europe. The report allows Member States to identify priorities in biodiversity conservation policies at national and EU level. For reliable monitoring, increasingly fine scales (eg 1: 5000) and time series of data are required by the Management Bodies for the identification of changes and invasive species.
- Puglia develops about 1000 km of coasts and of these about 60% is represented by high coasts. The problem of the use and conservation of these areas is critical for the development of tourist activities in the region, as the numerous collapses in recent years have often forced local administrators to prohibit access to suggestive areas. The monitoring of these areas, protected and not, has so far been characterized by limited interventions in the use of specific tools and expensive land campaigns.

In this scenario, the COHECO project proposed the development of an innovative multi-platform environmental monitoring system based on the automatic integration and analysis of: a) multi-scale, multi-temporal and multi-spectral data from satellite, aircraft and unguided human vehicles (UAVs) with b) data from ground sensors (eg laser scanner, GPS). The system is configured as a support for: 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 over time of the effectiveness of the policies adopted to favor the state of conservation of nature and the economic development of the territory.

The monitoring system, tested in protected areas of the Natura 2000 network because they are richer in data on the ground for validation, is applicable to the entire regional territory.