- The company starts up an air space surveillance station for Ecuador’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation in one of the most protected areas with the strictest ecological standards in the world
Indra implemented in Galapagos, one of the areas with the strongest environmental laws across the world, an air space surveillance station whose environmental impact has been reduced to almost zero.
The new facilities are equipped with a secondary radar system located on the San Joaquín hill, in the San Cristobal Island. UNESCO recognised the area as a World Heritage Site and has been well protected from the action of man remaining almost virgin. It must not be forgotten that 2 centuries ago, the island’s flora and fauna was a critical element for Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
Nowadays the archipelago is a National Park rigorously protected by Ecuador’s authorities. For this reason, Indra was very careful in order to avoid damaging the environment. The company was extremely observant of the standards regarding electromagnetic issues as established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), conducted a study of environmental impact prior to the works to obtain the license conferred by the country’s Ministry of the Environment and worked alongside the National Park’s technicians who supervised the works at all times.
This way, Indra has successfully met all environmental requirements and overcame the added difficulty of the remoteness of the area, located at 1,000 km off Ecuador’s mainland which implies a significant amount of logistics obstacles. To deal with this, the company appointed a team of 12 people, most of them from Ecuador and others from the island itself.
The team dealt with the startup of the station for three months ensuring that accesses, the precinct, materials, energy systems, the equipment and even the colour employed had a minimum impact on the environment.
Ecuador’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation is now equipped with a new system to surveil Galapagos’ air space whose air traffic management depended on radio communications that also supported aircrafts in their approach to San Cristobal and Baltra airports until now. It will also control the ocean corridor that joins the archipelago with mainland completing Ecuador’s control area.
The data collected through the radar system will be distributed via VSAT satellite terminals and through a microwave link so that airports in the island and the control centres in Guayaquil are able to supervise all the traffic.
With this project Indra’s technology will contribute to the archipelago’s sustainable development, allowing flow of tourists interested in this ecosystem.
Besides all the tests and requirements the new station has been subjected to, we should also mention the Environmental Management Programme that demands the station to undergo an annual audit to make sure standards are being met.
Leaders in sustainability
Indra is a leader in sustainability in the IT and internet services worldwide according to the ranking elaborated by the Swiss agency SAM in cooperation with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
To elaborate the ranking, different criteria are considered, not only economy-related, but also environmental and social, among others. This report, which consists of only 320 companies out of 2,000, is a reference for the Dow Jones sustainability index. Indra quotes in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSWI) and in the Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability (DJSI STOXX).
Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to stock market capitalisation, and also the second Spanish company with the most investment in R&D. In 2008, revenues reached € 2,380 M, of which a third came from the international market. The company employs more than 29,000 professionals and has clients in more than 90 countries.