The aim of this paper is to develop the concept of regional observabil
ity for distributed systems. This original concept is closer to practi
cal considerations since it only requires the observation of the state
on a given subregion. We show by means of an example that it is a wea
ker concept and we describe two approaches. The first one is state spa
ce based and can be easily implemented for numerical simulations. Then
a second approach leads to the estimation of the state on the conside
red subregion with a zero residual state.