IIMEO stands for Instantaneous Infrastructure Monitoring by Earth Observation.
Energy supply, communication, transport – our globalised society is highly dependent on functioning infrastructures. To ensure that these are always readily available, we are working on automatically detecting disruptions in real time. Disruptions can be caused by natural disasters, extreme weather events or deliberate manipulation. To restore the functionality of critical systems promptly after an incident, it is important to quickly gain an overview of the overall situation. This is why IIMEO aims to detect infrastructure malfunctions automatically, across large areas and in near real time, regardless of local weather and lighting conditions. To do so, IIMEO pursues the vision of processing satellite data in space with new algorithms in such a way that anomalies are automatically detected and reported to the relevant authorities. For that, the monitoring of railway lines is to serve as a pilot use case. The project has been selected for implementation by the European Commission in the beginning of 2023 and is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme as an innovation action. It will run until 30 November 2025.