At the end of July, the President of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Teodoro Valente, signed an important framework agreement with the President of Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto, in order to ensure timely interventions to protect the environment against disasters and climate change.
Based on shared goals in the fields of space and aerospace, this agreement will focus on the following areas:
- Earth observation (the applications of which will be used for environmental, marine, forest and agri-food monitoring and for the protection of cultural and archaeological heritage);
- Application downstream;
- Spreading of aerospace culture;
- Territorial and environmental protection.
This agreement for planet monitoring was greeted with enthusiasm by the parties involved, which recognized it as a crucial step to strengthen the policies of local authorities aimed at an efficient coordinated and joint management of the territory and resources. “Space is more and more an essential for monitoring our planet – said the ASI President – Thanks to the large amount of data received from satellites, we can study in detail many elements linked to the protection of various urban, agricultural and marine settings. The key word here is sustainability, for a future more focused on the safety of citizens and infrastructures, and a particular attention towards the management of the protection of cultural and archaeological heritage”.
Roberto Occhiuto, who is focusing on the protection of the Region’s environment and territory during his mandate, added that: “This agreement offers us the opportunity to develop future space applications to protect the environment and to use data ASI already have in order to have an increasingly widespread, technological and innovative control of the territory: we would like to become a virtuous model for Italy and Europe”.
