EO Tracking of Marine Debris in the Mediterranean Sea (DTA.AD004.268)
Thematic area
Earth system science and environmental technologies
Project area
Osservazione della Terra (DTA.AD004)Structure responsible for the research project
Marine science institute (ISMAR)
Project manager
STEFANO ALIANI
Phone number: +39 0187 1788911
Email: stefano.aliani@sp.ismar.cnr.it
Abstract
The project fits in several topics of the call i.e. Scientific data exploitation, Public sector applications, enabling industry
growth, evolving shared technical platform capabilities and, in the future, after completion should also fit the categories,
building network of resources and EO for Sustainable Development. From those, competing in the category "Enabling
industry growth" has been chosen, due to its relation with the sustainment of smart governance in local communities
and related market that the company currently assesses via its sister companies.
Keeping beaches pristine along the northern Mediterranean areas is a social necessity because of the weight of the
tourism industry in the economy. Besides, litter stranding followed by a systematic mechanic cleaning of beaches and
nearshore harms the environment, impacting both the stabilization of the shoreline and the coastal biodiversity.
Tracking of clouds of floating debris from river outlets to their landing spots shall help sustainably manage beach
cleaning by properly scheduling the operations and supporting the development of prevention methodologies rather
than reaction ones.
Goals
The objective is two-folded:
[OBJ1] Complete the internal development of EO algorithms to detect filaments of marine debris with Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, validate the resulting data processors, find the detection thresholds, and assess the capacity of quantifying the volume of floating debris.
[OBJ2] Specify the integration of EO data in the proposed service to local communities for the forecast of debris beaching and hind cast of debris beaching (backtrack the origin of the debris spill), based on:
a) Meteorological and river hydraulics forecast, for alerts.
b) Data crowdsourcing on social networks, and/or professional crowdsourcing for warnings.
c) EO, crowdsourcing by fishermen, and ocean modelling, for tracking.
d) Crowdsourcing by beach goers and debris landing surveys by technical department of municipalities on foot or with drones, for assessment.
[OBJ3] Produce a roadmap collecting the potential improvements and future developments that shall be carried out to consolidate the methodologies and expand the capabilities of the service.
Start date of activity
01/10/2018
Keywords
earth observation, marin debris
Last update: 09/06/2025