Is that bridge, slope, or dam moving? Europe already measures ground motion across the whole continent with millimeter precision and free data. Maintenance decisions can rest on it today.
EGMS: millimeter precision · annual updates · free
Infrastructure is aging, and satellite monitoring is no longer experimental: the European ground motion service is operational, free, and has produced data since 2021. This is what already works, with the caveats included:
The Copernicus European Ground Motion Service measures natural and human-made motion with millimeter precision from Sentinel-1 InSAR, with annual updates and free access. Its declared applications include monitoring dams, bridges, railways, and buildings. Three product levels: Basic, Calibrated (calibrated with GNSS), and Ortho (vertical and east-west components on a 100 m grid).
covers EU-27 + UK, Norway, Iceland
The Spanish national geographic institute (IGN) runs an automated InSAR service with Sentinel-1 (interferograms, coherence, and line-of-sight displacement, with a 6 to 12 day revisit) applied in near real time to volcano monitoring in the Canary Islands.
6 to 12 day revisit
The Spanish Ministry of Transport has tendered contracts to monitor bridges and slopes on the national road network: 8.8 M€ (2023), 8.5 M€ (2024), and 6.45 M€ (2025), according to press reports. Press sources do not state whether these contracts include InSAR.
8.8 · 8.5 · 6.45 M€ [press]
Measuring co-seismic deformation with Sentinel-1 interferograms is standard practice documented by ESA, and Copernicus EMS rapid mapping is activated after major earthquakes: the basis to assess infrastructure damage without waiting for field inspection.
Sentinel-1: standard practice (ESA)
Our role is the integrator. We combine EGMS with your asset inventory, set thresholds per structure, and turn millions of measurement points into a short list of alerts a maintenance team can review: a structural health platform with no new sensors and no work on the structure itself.
EGMS uses InSAR (a radar that compares satellite passes to work out how much each point on the ground has moved) to measure the millimeter-level displacement of every structure. On a dam or a viaduct we follow the series point by point and set our own threshold. When a section starts to move faster than usual, the maintenance team gets the alert and schedules the inspection, without waiting for the annual review.
EGMS · InSAR · mm/year per point
We guide the inspection team with precise positioning from Galileo (PPP, a method that fixes the position within a few centimeters with no ground station needed). Each photo is georeferenced at the same place visit after visit. This lets you compare the same joint or the same crack year after year and see whether it is growing, with a record that stands as evidence for the owner.
Galileo HAS · PPP ~20 cm
During construction, Sentinel-1 watches the stability of slopes and fills with InSAR while Sentinel-2 documents surface progress every few days. The series of dates shows whether something is deforming before it is visible on site. The result is continuous monitoring of the work area that backs up site decisions and leaves a record of every phase.
Sentinel-1 and 2 · time series · 6 to 12 days
Millimeter-level subsidence and deformation over your assets: from EGMS to an actionable alert.
European GNSS for fleets, rail, and road: the other pillar of this sector.
Thresholds, alerts, and inspection priorities inside your maintenance workflow.
Tell us about your network (bridges, dams, slopes, or track) and we will tell you what EGMS already sees on it, and how to turn that into useful alerts.
Talk to the team