In the era of Space Economy, satellite services represent a key element that must be valued and promoted by institutions at local and global level, because they can ensure sustainable economic development and generate benefits for citizens and society. For this reason, they have been recognized among the top strategic priorities of the Italian Space Agency, which deals with the implementation of national space policies.With the main objective of stimulating the growth of the national downstream ecosystem, the Agency has proposed and started the I4DP – Innovation for Downstream Preparation program, which, through cyclical initiatives, offers support to public and private users for the creation of innovative space solutions helping the processes of management and development of the territory and its resources. This work aims to provide a complete picture of the state-of-the-art of the I4DP program and its future prospects, showing the potential effects to support the entire Italian community along the entire value chain of space services and the downstream economic sector, with a focus on selected projects within some identified topics of particular interest such as infrastructure monitoring, the fight against climate change and the adaptation to its effects, precision farming, the sustainability of cities.

The downstream space sector in Italy is confronted with distinctive challenges, marked by a fragmented landscape, inadequate stakeholder interactions, underdeveloped business planning, and a critical need for improved industrial and financial acumen. In response to these challenges, the Italian Space Agency has taken a central role in addressing these issues through the establishment of the Downstream and Integrated Application Unit. The primary objective of this unit is to elevate the competitiveness of national Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), industries, and academia operating in the space sector. Within this strategic framework, the PRISMA SCIENZA program emerges as a pivotal initiative, aiming to harness the scientific data generated by the PRISMA mission for the improvement of the Italian Community. Specifically, the program is designed to facilitate the complete exploitation of mission data while concurrently fostering the advancement of Italian expertise in the hyperspectral remote sensing sector.By operating within this comprehensive framework, the PRISMA SCIENZA program contributes to the overarching goal of addressing challenges within the Italian downstream space sector. It not only serves as a mechanism for maximizing the utilization of mission data but also plays a vital role in promoting the growth and proficiency of the Italian space industry, aligning with broader strategic objectives set forth by the Italian Space Agency.Aim of this paper is to analyze the effects the PRISMA SCIENZA program brought to the Italian industrial and scientific communities.

The "Multi-mission and multi-frequency SAR" program (2021-2023) of the Italian Space Agency supported the national community to develop algorithms combining SAR data collected in C, X and L-bands. Main achievements in terms of SAR data exploitation, integration and data fusion, and new products prototyping are presented with regard to agriculture, natural hazards, urban areas, cryosphere, sea and coast. Perspectives are finally outlined with regard to future SAR missions and towards downstream applications.

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) promotes the use of space assets to address not only scientific research questions, but also civilian applications and to the social-economic benefit of citizens. In the current scenario, when efforts are made to achieve the United Nations' 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the COSMO-SkyMed data exploitation initiatives launched by ASI - “Open Call for Science” and “Open Call for National Industry/Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)” - show increasing statistics proving that users are exploring how this state-of-the-art space technology can be used to address several applications feeding into SDGs. A selection of the successful experiences is discussed in relation to infrastructure monitoring, environmental assessment, understanding of and mitigation to natural hazards and climate change. The ASI's initiatives also helped companies to develop new businesses and cooperate with local administrations to address sustainability and land management issues.

In continuity with the investments made on SAR technologies in the last two decades by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the “Multi-mission and multi-frequency SAR” program currently supports ten R&D projects aiming to design, develop and test innovative algorithms for exploitation of multi-mission/multi-frequency SAR data. Perspectives of engineering and pre-operational development are demonstrated with regard to various application domains (i.e. agriculture, urban areas, natural hazards, cryosphere, sea and coast). Access to COSMO-SkyMed and SAOCOM images is facilitated by ASI to allow the research consortia to achieve an effective multi-frequency SAR data integration. The program represents a foundational step in the ASI's roadmap towards “scientific downstream applications”, i.e. applications enabled by the exploitation of mature and validated algorithms that have been originally developed to answer scientific questions and/or retrieve geophysical parameters, and have been brought to the stage that they can generate products that address specific user needs beyond scientific and academic purposes only.

SAR images from Italian COSMO-SkyMed mission can have a significant impact on the production and updates of land cover maps. However, for the full exploitation of the data and their application to nationwide extensions, robust automatic procedures need to be designed. In this paper we present the preliminary results obtained by the implementation of a processing scheme using COSMO-SkyMed images to provide, and regularly update every six months, land cover maps for the whole Italian territory. Most of the automatic processing is based on Neural Networks (NN) algorithms. In particular PCNN (Pulse Coupled NN) have been considered for change detection purposes while Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLP) have been used for classifying the pixels belonging to a detected changed area.

COSMO-SkyMed (Constellation of Small satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation) is a fundamental, powerful asset to Earth Observation field, in which Italy plays a crucial role at world level. It is an Earth Observation Dual Use System (civil and military) conceived to fulfill both civilian and defense needs, enhancing international partnerships through its Interoperability, Expandability and Multi-sensor (IEM) features and operational practices. It provides products and services for global environmental monitoring, scientific and commercial purposes and strategic applications (Defense and National security). The aim of this paper is to present the status and the result of the COSMO-SkyMed Mission after five years of operability.

The European Commission has identified the enhancement of integrated border management as one of the most important areas of interest. The 7th Framework Programme for research and development has been used since 2008 to improve the performance of the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) and to test technical capabilities to curtail the flow of illegal immigrants reaching European coasts. In this sense, several initiatives have been fostered, CLOSEYE being one of them. In this paper a comprehensive description of the CLOSEYE project will be provided, highlighting the preliminary results obtained in this context by the synergic use of the two main Italian assets providing services in Satellite Earth Observation and Communications: COSMO-SkyMed constellation and Athena-Fidus satellite.

The April 25, 2015 M7.8 Gorkha earthquake caused more than 8,000 fatalities and widespread building damage in central Nepal. Four days after the earthquake, the Italian Space Agency's (ASI's) COSMO-SkyMed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite acquired data over Kathmandu area. Nine days after the earthquake, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA's) ALOS-2 SAR satellite covered larger area. Using these radar observations, we rapidly produced damage proxy maps derived from temporal changes in Interferometric SAR (InSAR) coherence. These maps were qualitatively validated through comparison with independent damage analyses by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the UNITAR's (United Nations Institute for Training and Research's) Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), and based on our own visual inspection of DigitalGlobe's WorldView optical pre- vs. post-event imagery. Our maps were quickly released to responding agencies and the public, and used for damage assessment, determining inspection/imaging priorities, and reconnaissance fieldwork.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Italian Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) Earth Observation Space System composed of four satellites with an X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). It is conceived for global environmental monitoring, scientific and commercial purposes and strategic applications (Defence and National Security). During the last years, thanks to a continuous monitoring of user feedbacks, some aspects of the interface between COSMO-SkyMed System and external users have been identified to be improved. New services and new tools are intended to be introduced in order to make the interface more efficient. In this paper an overview of these new services will be shown, mainly concern with the Customer Service activities and the data utilization by civilian users.

In 2003, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), supported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and the Ministry of Defense (It-MoD), commissioned and funded the COSMO-SkyMed (COnstellation of small Satellites for the Mediterranean basin Observation) mission, an Earth Observation Dual Use System (civil and military) for the monitoring of Resources, Natural Disasters and National Security. COSMO-SkyMed system, which represents the Italian biggest investment in the Earth Observation (EO) field, was realized by TAS-I (Thales Alenia Space Italy) as the industrial prime contractor for the Space Segment, and Telespazio as prime contractor for the Ground Segment, logistic and operations. For what concern the commercial distribution of COSMO-SkyMed products, ASI and Telespazio have constituted the e-GEOS company.

We used a variety of SAR-based techniques to measure the crustal deformation associated to the Darfield and Christchurch earthquakes, New Zealand. We detected clear post-seismic signals of the Darfield earthquake, and a pre-seismic signal spatially and temporally associated to the Christchurch earthquake. The small pre-seismic signal (∼25 mm) has an opposite polarity of the much larger co-seismic one (∼150 mm) in the same area.

COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) End-to-End Earth Observation System aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data, products and services relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence Applications. The system consists of a constellation of four LEO mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multi-mode high-resolution SAR operating at X-band. Three out of four COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched, while the remaining satellite will be deployed within 2010. The first two satellites have been launched in 2007 while COSMO-SkyMed-3 has been launched on October 25th2008. Since its launch COSMO-SkyMed-3 has been put in an orbital position at 67,5° from COSMO-SkyMed-2, in the so-called “one-day interferometry configuration”. Since then COSMO-SkyMed-2 and COSMO-SkyMed-3 are providing a interferometric pairs for a wide range of applications.

The surface transport of `SAR detectable' features on sea is accurately estimated by couples of overlapping COSMO SkyMed ScanSAR images acquired with a very short time lag (below the hour). Tests performed with the two satellites constellation during 2008 (4 operative by 2010) provided pairs of overlapping images with a time shift of 48 minutes and with a repeat time from 12 to 24 h. The short time lag acquisition has two advantages: the first is that the pair of overlapping images is a sort of time derivative from which an accurate estimate of the surface transport can be extracted, the second is that the deformation of the `tracked features' in the short time interval is minimal and a large number of objects can be tracked, even with the only automated processing. The sea surface transport is a crucial data in case of marine emergencies and the accurate estimate greatly improves the surveillance and the forecasting capability. Overlapping and short time lagged SAR imagery provide surface transport data of detectable objects with all-weather conditions.

COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) end-to-end Earth Observation System aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data, products and services relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence Applications. The system consists of a constellation of four LEO mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multimode high-resolution SAR operating at X-band. Three out of four COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched, while the remaining satellite will be deployed within 2010. COSMO-1 and COSMO-2 completed their Commissioning phase to test, verify and qualify the overall System and from the 1st of August both satellites are in the operational phase. The third satellite is performing its commissioning and it is expected to enter in operation in the second half of 2009. In this paper will be presented the current status of the mission and future objectives.