Friuli hosts a Center of Excellence in satellite technology

Satellite technology is the new context in which the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region aims to excel. A cooperation between the Science and Technology Park in Udine and Dermap Ltd., a company operating in the field of Geographic Information Systems, has led to the idea of a specialistic laboratory in this field.

Friuli Innovazione, as an APSTI (Italian Science and Technology Parks Association) partner since 2006, is part of the National Commission of Parks for the ICT field; in this context Friuli Innovazione is responsible for the subject of satellite technology, with the task of bringing forward studies and insterests for all the Italian scientific Parks.

For this matter Friuli Innovazione established  a close cooperation with Dermap, a company which was born thanks to the Technoseed enterprise incubator project and is presently hosted in the Science and Technology Park "Luigi Danieli" in Udine. Dermap and Friuli innovazione have recently established an agreement for the development of satellite technology and for the creation of a center of excellence for this topic.

The center of excellence will focus on studying and improving the available technology for satellite remote sensing as well as analyzing the possible applications of the satellite remote sensing systems.

"Many people nowadays use satellites as a mean for an easy journey by car or for a guide while trekking; the potential and the applications of these technologies are a constantly increasing number though. A better knowledge and a wiser use of these technology can become a great help for better solutions in business, for an improved management of the territory, for health, and in general for a better quality of life. The idea of developing new solutions and testing them in our region was born from these thoughts. the initiative was appreciated by the APSTI ICT Commission, which asked Friuli Innovazione to guide the reflection on the thread - says Fabio Feruglio, director of Friuli Innovazione - and to share the results with the network of the Parks. This has an economic significance as well, since it will boost the establishment of new business realities with high technological content on our territory."

"The applications of remote sensing are countless - says Daniele Gulic, president of Dermap -. The goal of this center of excellence is to become a reference point in our region for all the public and private realities needing a historical, real-time or forecasting analysis for a number of topics, such as agriculture, public health, insurance service, road maintenance. For instance, it will be possible to work on the development of models for the survey of highway asphalts or for the identification of asbestos rooftops."

As a further support to the activity of the center of excellence, the installation of a ground station is planned; that is a Multi-mission satellite station for receiving high resolution satellite data and, thanks to the strategic position of the Science and Technology Park, this would allow a direct and specific access to satellite imagery for the required tasks.

The project for the establishment of the center of excellence will be supported, with patronages or partnerships, by the Province of Udine, by the "Marinelli" Scientific High School (with which a cooperation has been established for the definition of a teaching program involving a scientific work on satellite technology for the final exams), by DITEDI (District for Digital Technology), by Friuli Innovazione and the University of Trieste. Within a short time this cooperation is to be extended to ARPA (Regional Agency for Environmental Protection), ERSA (Regional Agency for Rural Development) and the University of Graz.