The Monitor Project: A GNSS Based Platform for Land Monitoring and Civil Engineering Applications

For nearly 50 years, geodesists and surveyors developed deformation monitoring techniques based on traditional land surveying equipment, such as theodolites, Electronic Distance Measuring Devices, both absolute at sub-millimetric accuracy (Mekometer, derived by a prototype of Physical National Laboratory, Teddington, UK), and interferometric (long arm Michelson laser interferometers) and submillimetric levels. From the 1980’s onwards, these techniques were first supplemented and later completely replaced by the more easy satellite positioning technology based on GPS. The early GPS deformation monitoring techniques were developed for the benefit of geophysicists, who were involved in the monitoring of crustal dynamics and in plate tectonics. Deformation monitoring of engineering structures was to follow suit. Although GPS suffers from a number of limitations which affect the coverage, accuracy and reliability of the satellite measurements, GNSS systems allow continuous nearly-real-time monitoring of the small movements of points. The development of Galileo, its proposed interoperability with GPS, and the use of EGNOS, will contribute substantially to the quantity and quality of the satellite measurements thereby improving the quality of the deformation monitoring process. Moreover, the availability of signals from two different satellite systems is likely to reduce the price of GNSS receivers and sensors and thus enabling a wider spatial coverage with an increase in the number of monitoring points. In particular Galileo will increase the integrity of the GNSS measurements, which is very important for such applications affecting Safety of Life (SoL), and therefore involving legal and economic consequences. In this context the European Galileo Project managed on behalf of the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA), by Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU), has opened new era in Satellite Navigation. One of the missions of the GJU, through its business development initiatives, is to develop future markets for Galileo and the European satellite based augmentation system, EGNOS, addressing a large number of user communities including Location Based Services (LBS), Road, Rail, Maritime, Aviation, and a Special Sector to which the Land and Civil Engineering community belongs. The GJU 2nd Call was launched in June 2004, with bids submitted in October 2004. After the bids evaluation and negotiations, the MONITOR projects Consortium was successfully established and the Consortium was awarded the contract to address the Land and the Civil Engineering Community. The partners within the Monitor Project Consortium include universities, companies and organisation based in Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, Romania and Greece, whose combined capabilities cover all aspects of high precision monitoring of land and engineering of structural deformations, current satellites positioning techniques, engineering applications of GNSS and the potential benefits of the Galileo system. This paper aims to describe the current status of MONITOR Project (officially kicked off in November 2005 and lasting till the mid summer of 2007) and the purposes to which, this 18 months long project, is focused on. A particular attention will be devoted to the description of the three Pilot Projects experimentation (par. 3, 4, 5), representative of the priority applications identified in a preliminary phase (par. 2), and to their relation with a technological and operative platform, represented by the Monitor Control Centre (par. 6), mandatory to provide a wide group of users, that span from the professional users (surveyors, researchers, national and local institutions, organizations, etc.) to citizenship, useful responses to their needs. 1 The Monitor Project: Overview Performed by the adoption of high precision measurements techniques and by the identification of clear procedure that can be tested and then refined to drive future certifications and standardisation processes, the MONITOR Project is focused on demonstration of the use of satellite navigation in existing and new application areas, such as the Land Monitoring and Civil Engineering, the description and promotion of the added value to be brought by Galileo and EGNOS, and finally to pave the way for the acceptance of these added technologies and tools into our industry and to a wider user community. The MONITOR Project is structured in three phases: I. Critical analysis: that concerns the analysis of the land monitoring and civil engineering frame versus several enablers: (technology, market, standards, regulatory and legal aspects, etc..) with the final objective of the selection of the applications identified representative of certain priorities for the community addressed, elements that under a deep analysis provide the selection of the Pilot Projects to be implemented. II. Pilot Project definition and execution: that concerns the definition of a Plan to be developed for the Pilot Projects (addressing the aspects of technology, market, regulation, standardisation and training), the implementation and the analysis of the results with the respect of the short term objective identified by the Plan. III. Results analysis: that concerns the identification of all the elements of criticalities, by a deep analysis of data results, that should be improved to guarantee that each application will reach its own objectives. The most significant phase of the project concerns the demonstration of the use of GNSS through the selection of some applications considered representative of the areas included into the land monitoring and civil engineering community, applications experimented within the Pilot Projects, and connected to each other 52 Satellite Communications and Navigation Systems