Today, 14 October, The European Space Agency and National Highways announced the signing of a Memorandum of Intent (MoI), aimed at supporting the development of innovative and sustainable space-based applications to improve safety on the roads. 

National Highways, the government company responsible for planning, designing, building, operating and maintaining England’s motorways and major A-roads, partnered with ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) team, backing their Road and Traffic Safety funding call. Open until 27 November, the call is inviting applications relating to space-based products and services that can help reduce accidents with better traffic management, incident detection and predictive safety solutions.   

Maria Zaretskaya, Business Development & Partnerships Officer at ESA, said: “We are delighted to be working with National Highways to explore how innovative space-based applications can support the future of the UK’s road network. By combining expertise from the space and transport sectors, we aim to support the development and demonstration of space-based solutions that address real-world challenges in land transport and deliver benefits for the wider transport sector and society.” 

The use cases detailed as key areas of interest for new space-enabled solutions have been informed by industry representatives including National Highways. For example, solutions are needed to for the International Road Assessment Programme (IRAP) surveys, which are a way to assess how safe roads are – they rely on data about road context, observed traffic flows and infrastructure attributes to produce risk-based safety ratings. Space-based tools could significantly improve the cost-effectiveness, efficiency, frequency and precision of this data. 

Nick Joyce, Interim Chief Executive at National Highways said: “Safety is our number one priority, and we are exploring every route possible to keep drivers on our roads safe. Research and innovation play a crucial role in that. Our partnership with the European Space Agency enables us to embrace broader technology to improve road safety."
 
“Satellite communications and earth observation will help us make better proactive and preventative decisions which will improve our ability to identify risks on our roads and better understand the condition of our network.”