Detecting & monitoring floating aquatic plastic litter

AIDMAP will support the detection of floating aquatic plastic litter

In the upcoming months we will explore the use of Artificial Intelligence to monitor plastic accumulation zones in Vietnam, one of the hotspots of marine litter pollution. 

Until now only little information is available on the size and the location of the accumulation zones and the percentage of plastic litter. During the past years we’ve already built up knowledge on hyperspectral reflectance properties of marine litter in the HYPER project. The project showed that spectral information in the VNIR-SWIR can help to identify plastics but discrimination between plastics, wood and surface features (e.g. glint) can become difficult when the plastic is slightly submerged or wet.

In the AIDMAP project we will use drones and very high resolution satellites, and explore the use of new remote sensing technologies including deep learning and artificial intelligence to improve detection and monitoring services for floating aquatic plastic litter.

AIDMAP is a collaboration between VITO Remote Sensing, VIGAC (Vietnam Institute of Geodesy and Cartography, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam), the University of Oldenburg and Dr. Shungu Garaba.