Innovative services for asset management based on satellite data elaboration

Over the past decades, many countries have heavily invested in the development of space infrastructure, creating a solid foundation for the sector. Since 2012, the emergence of the “space economy”, defined by the OECD as all activities that generate value and benefits for humanity through the use of space, has marked a new era. Recently, attention has shifted to space-based services, meaning value-added operational services delivered to end users through satellite systems. In Europe, the ESA and national space agencies have funded numerous projects, most of which have resulted in successful demonstrations of applications but not yet in fully operational services. The current challenge is to transform existing infrastructure into concrete services that can support decision-making and drive economic growth. The EU acknowledges the increasing role of space-based services across multiple sectors (agriculture, transport, security, maritime policy, etc.), emphasizing the importance of user involvement to ensure that services are relevant and tailored to real needs. However, there is still limited understanding of the practical potential of these services. To enable broader adoption, sustainable governance and funding must be established, along with secure access to space data and services. Moreover, a paradigm shift is needed — from a technology-push approach (driven by technological capability) to a demand-driven one, where services are developed in response to the actual needs and requirements of end users and the market. The thesis is articulated in several steps. The first have concentrated around the analysis of the satellites in orbit through the last years: the UCS satellites database has been analysed, leading to the consciousness of the always raising interest in launching EO satellites with commercial scope, useful for the providing of data to the enterprises that employ this kind of data for the creation of value-added services for businesses on Earth. From a total of 53 EO satellites orbiting in 2012, this number has risen to 1263 in 2023. The successive step has been focused on the analysis of a sample of enterprises using EO satellites data for the creation of space value-added services, used as basin for the research: the results have shown a growing interest in using satellite data for monitoring and change detection types of application and mainly in agriculture, disaster monitoring, environment and management application fields, leading the market of global satellite data services at an estimated value of 14.44 billion dollars in year 2025. Among the several application domains, the two of interest investigated in my work of thesis, have been the ones of management of asset, especially for what regards the monitoring and management of the railway infrastructure and the one of safety & security services, linked to disasters monitoring and prediction and target identification for national surveillance. Thereafter, the body of the work has focused on the activities I‘ve conducted on two projects (still on-going) during the doctoral period: MERCURIO, for the creation of a DSS for the railway operators and AXIS 3, a platform for enhancing Greek Government tools and capabilities in natural disasters monitoring and prediction. For what regards the MERCURIO project, the activities of requirements analysis, architecture design and risk management are shown, leading to consolidated results for these activities and some other preliminary and still to be updated results with reference to the service and deliverables for the final users of the project. As for AXIS 3, the activities conducted have been focused on the study and creation of some managerial documents of the project related to the logistics (procurement and inventory) of the items to be acquired for the project progress, risk management of the managerial identified risks for the project, service management plan and system user/operating manual; some other results related to the preliminary ones of the service, are also illustrated. In conclusion, the study highlights the increasing importance of satellite data in developing value-added space solutions that improve business performance across various sectors on Earth. With growing investments from both public and private actors and a rapidly expanding market for satellite data services, interest in space continues to rise. This trend is expected to drive further innovation, enabling wider use of satellite technologies in areas such as asset management, emergency response and new applications yet to be explored.