The project, called “COVID-19 economic impact assessment from Space in Italian Ports and Logistic Centers - Enabling Industry Growth”, will be funded in the context of the permanent ESA call “EO Science for Society”, aimed at supporting solutions and services using Earth Observation data for the benefit of citizens.
e-GEOS will lead a team composed of the startup CherryData, spinoff of the Politecnico di Milano, and the company ExpertLAB, headquartered in Rome.
Thanks to a specific big data management and analysis approach, the solution is able to integrate current and historical data from different sources - optical and radar satellite images, information on road traffic, on pollution and on the presence of mobile phones - to analyse and compare trends in the economic activity in the period from 2019 to 2020 and identify future trends.
The solution therefore identifies some indicators in order to characterize the effects of the lockdown and the subsequent gradual return to normality, such as for example the number of ships arriving or leaving a port, as a data representative of the changes in progress.
Thanks to the ability to analyse data from different sources and related to different stages of the crisis, the solution will also be able to monitor and quantify data related to the recovery of the economic activity. The information generated may provide useful information to institutions and entities, in particular to banks, insurance and transport companies.
Data related to some of the largest ports in the country will be analysed, allowing for a potential global scalability.
“This project demonstrates e-GEOS's ability to integrate multi-source information and technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics and computing tools to provide innovative solutions and tools to support institutions’ decisions,”
Paolo Minciacchi, CEO of e-GEOS
Leonardo, through e-GEOS, after providing maps and data to support the management of the COVID-19 emergency through the activation of Copernicus EMS Rapid Mapping, continues to develop innovative solutions in the field of geo-information to deal with the pandemic through the integrated data analysis.