Today we present another activity detected by our satellite-based monitoring solution CoSMiC-EYE: dredging.

Dredging activities can have a significant impact on pipelines, causing damage and disruption to operations and therefore need to be monitored closely by pipeline operators. Through the analysis of multi-spectral data from the Sentinel-2 satellite, we detected the dredging activity shown in the video, and reported this to our customer. Besides, we provided high-resolution optical satellite data for the location of the dredging activity, enabling this customer to follow the progress of dredging from the office.

𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀?
Common ways of monitoring pipeline networks are by aerial inspection, or by car patrol. But what happens when the network increases in size? Or when the monitoring frequency has to be increased to maintain a safety level under the trend of increasing groundworks for the energy transition? An additional helicopter flight is needed and extra personal is hired for the car patrols. Those solutions increase the already costly monitoring expenses and can not be regarded scalable at all. The solution provided by CoSMiC-EYE is per definition easily scalable because of the use of satellites. We can start monitoring all over the world without having to get equipment at difficult to reach places. It is simultaneously very straightforward and cost-effective to double the monitoring frequency compared to the other methods. We do not have to hire additional people to drive or fly by the network. All can be done with the already available satellites and can be monitored easily from the office by the same person.

𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗦𝗠𝗶𝗖-𝗘𝗬𝗘:
✅ Provides an almost instant monitoring solution all over the world
✅ Straightforward and cost effective to increase monitoring frequency
✅ Requires little extra personnel when expanding

𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱:
The principle of scalability of satellite based pipeline operations is easily explained in the video. An area in the Netherlands in green is monitored by a radar satellite. The red box is the area being monitored by the satellite; here a single overpass of a single satellite. With that same overpass, we can monitor as well a network in Spain near Barcelona. Then we zoom out and see the coverage of that single satellite for a 12 day period, and you can see how easily scalable CoSMiC-EYE really is! And we didn’t even take into account that there are so much more satellites we acquire data from.