Twelve million euros to build a new regional observation, monitoring, and risk analysis capacity, integrating unmanned aerial systems, satellite Earth observation, and advanced data processing. This is one of the most innovative pillars of the measures approved with the recent budget amendment by the Regional Council. Over the 2027-2028 two-year period, seven million euros are planned for the regional UAS program on unmanned aerial systems. An additional five million euros will be available over the same period for the acquisition of satellite Earth observation services, which will converge, along with advanced data processing, into a single knowledge infrastructure.

The drone program leverages the experience gained in recent years by the Directorate General of Civil Protection and the Forestry and Environmental Surveillance Corps (CFVA), expanding the potential for using UAS technologies: fire detection and support for firefighting operations, search and rescue of missing persons, monitoring of hydrogeological and water risks, forestry, coastlines and marine pollution, monitoring of industrial and environmental risks, mapping of danger areas, and supporting communications in emergencies.

The equipment may be used by the Regional Civil Protection for the multi-risk purposes of forecasting, prevention, relief, and emergency response, and in a coordinated manner also to support the CFVA's environmental surveillance and monitoring functions.

"We're not interested in technology as an end in itself. We're interested," says Regional Environment Councilor Rosanna Laconi, "in what technology allows us to know earlier and what allows operators to make better and faster decisions. A fire identified earlier, a hydrogeological problem read more precisely, a missing person located more quickly can radically change the outcome of an intervention."

Drones will be complemented by satellite services, acquired as a service and integrated through a regional processing and predictive analysis platform: radar and optical data, high-resolution products, and analysis tools available across the civil defense, environmental protection, agriculture, infrastructure, and environmental surveillance sectors. The new regional regulation also strengthens the principle of information interoperability, requiring the system's components to share useful data through the Civil Protection Information System.