Italy

The Italian public administrations, research institutions and private entities are playing an important role in supporting the evolution of GEO from its beginning in 2003 into the new mandate envisaged in the “GEO Strategic Plan 2016-2025: Implementing GEOSS”, endorsed by Nations at the 2015 Mexico City Summit.

1. Italy is fully committed to promote GEO at the national level, through appropriate community developments. Italy is continuously reinforcing engagement of national experts and is strengthening national level coordination among the institutions that lead or are active in various GEO initiatives. Italy is strongly committed to support the implementation of the GEO post-25 Strategy by reinforcing the engagement of research institutions and private EO sector with stakeholders and policy makers at national and European level.
2. The Italian Government in its budget considered the Green and Circular Economy as one of the government's priorities in enhancing sustainable economic development and well-being. To this end the Italian Government is fully committed to implement the 2030 UN Agenda on SD and has included a number of supporting initiatives, within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), among which it is worth mentioning two initiatives, in which EO plays a key role.
   • The IRIDE Program, due to be operational in mid-2026, with the main objective of providing EO-based services to the public administration and stimulating the commercial market. IRIDE is an end-to-end program, technically managed by a joint ESA/ASI team, which includes a constellation of satellites (Upstream Segment), all the ground infrastructure to operate the constellation and deliver the products to the users (Downstream Segment) and the services in eight thematic areas (Service Segment).
   • The SIM (Integrated Monitoring System), which includes a strong improvement of the public capability of in situ observations and the development of an integrated monitoring system covering 6 areas: Hydrogeologic instability monitoring, Precision agriculture, Marine and coastal pollution monitoring, Identification of illicit environmental activities, Support to emergencies, Support to forest fires prevention & management.
3. Italy is fully committed to implement the EuroGEO Secretariat through the EuroGEOSec project and support the European Regional GEO by participating in several ad-hoc expert groups.
4. At the European level, Italy is proud to contribute to several projects directly supported by the EC through the Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, LIFE and Copernicus Programmes (such as, Lifewatch, LTER, eLTER, within the H2020-Infrastructures ACTRIS, EPOS, EIRENE-RI, ERA4CS, EUNADICS-AV, GAIA-CLIM, H2020 E2mC – Evolution of Emergency Mapping in Copernicus and Operational Emergency Mapping Services within Copernicus Programme). Italy also supports GEO through its own space program in coordination with ESA and is a member of the European Infrastructure for an Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS, GEO Participating Organization) in the frame of the ESFRI roadmap. Our national and international activities underline a strong commitment to data sharing, interoperability of data and information systems and, to international cooperation. Among major goals, GEO Italy is providing a strong support to all Institutions involved at national and international level to advance the achievement of the 17 Goals of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development.
5. We fully support those GEO Flagships, Initiatives and Community Activities already fully engaged in such direction, i.e., GOS4M, GEO-GSNL, GEO-Mountains, Global Urban Observation and Information, GEO-ECO, just to mention a few, and we also support the SCO, Space for Climate Observatory.
6. We are proud of our national Space Program, and it is worth to mention:
   • The COSMO-SkyMed constellation, operational since 2008, equipped with X-band SAR sensors
   • The Italian hyperspectral satellite Mission - PRISMA, launched in March 2019, which contributes to closing a key gap in satellite observations. PRISMA catalogue is now visible through GEOSS and access to data is open to all interested parties through the dedicated ASI website.
   • The new missions under development, all of them providing support to GEO engagement priorities, among which we want to recall MAIA Mission, a joint ASI-NASA/JPL mission, which is expected to provide great advances in PM concentration evaluation from satellites and its impact on health.
   • Italy will continue to support and maintain the GEOSS Platform as an open and public global infrastructure for data sharing and knowledge generation infrastructure and ensure a direct link with other on-going programs aiming to an efficient use of EO data.Italy will continue to support the EU High Level Working Group, the GEO Program Board activities and any other initiative that may ensure the success of GEO in the near future.

Italy is contributing to the activity of the GEO Data Working Group and the GIDTT.

As the last but not the least, Italy would like to thank the GEO Secretariat and its staff for their effort in coordinating the cooperative effort of the GEO multilateral and multidisciplinary community towards the use of EO data and products in supporting end-users and all interested parties in the implementation of national, regional and international policy agendas.

Sincerely yours,

Nicola Pirrone GEO Principal of Italy