EESS talk on "Lessons learned for detecting and monitoring marine litter using remote sensing"
Abstract:
Marine litter is a global problem affecting the world’s oceans, with millions of plastic items ending up in the sea and affecting marine ecosystems. Coastal zones are among the most populated and productive areas globally, with various habitats and ecosystems. Global and local players have planned several initiatives towards detection, monitoring, and cleaning. Three initiatives will be presented, one for the sea surface, one for the beaches, and one for the sea column. The Plastic Litter Project (PLP), initiated in 2018, with the objective to construct large artificial targets and to deploy them on the sea surface for extracting meaningful spectral measurements in near-real life scenarios. Additionally, Coastal Marine Litter Observatory (CMLO), a drone-based and fully automated system, was developed for detecting and mapping the litter accumulations on the beaches. CMLO uses a citizen science UAS data acquisition protocol to enhance the data collection and is able to produce litter density maps using a dedicated machine learning detection algorithm. Finally, the spectral behaviour of plastics in the water column have recently been studied through SPOTS project. The project takes advantage of drone hyperspectral imagery for interconnecting plastic lab measurements and real-life experiments.
Short biography:
Dr. Konstantinos Topouzelis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences, University of the Aegean and he is leading the Marine Remote Sensing Group (http://mrsg.aegean.gr/). His main research interest is on the analysis of remote sensing datasets, including satellite and aerial images, for marine and coastal applications. His expertise includes automatic detection of oceanographic phenomena, Object Based Image Analysis, image processing algorithms and coastal mapping. He is an author of more than 50 refereed papers in international scientific journals, member of editorial board and referee in several scientific journals, principal investigator in international research projects. During the last years he has focused on fighting marine plastics from the coastal area.
Marine litter is a global problem affecting the world’s oceans, with millions of plastic items ending up in the sea and affecting marine ecosystems. Coastal zones are among the most populated and productive areas globally, with various habitats and ecosystems. Global and local players have planned several initiatives towards detection, monitoring, and cleaning. Three initiatives will be presented, one for the sea surface, one for the beaches, and one for the sea column. The Plastic Litter Project (PLP), initiated in 2018, with the objective to construct large artificial targets and to deploy them on the sea surface for extracting meaningful spectral measurements in near-real life scenarios. Additionally, Coastal Marine Litter Observatory (CMLO), a drone-based and fully automated system, was developed for detecting and mapping the litter accumulations on the beaches. CMLO uses a citizen science UAS data acquisition protocol to enhance the data collection and is able to produce litter density maps using a dedicated machine learning detection algorithm. Finally, the spectral behaviour of plastics in the water column have recently been studied through SPOTS project. The project takes advantage of drone hyperspectral imagery for interconnecting plastic lab measurements and real-life experiments.
Short biography:
Dr. Konstantinos Topouzelis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences, University of the Aegean and he is leading the Marine Remote Sensing Group (http://mrsg.aegean.gr/). His main research interest is on the analysis of remote sensing datasets, including satellite and aerial images, for marine and coastal applications. His expertise includes automatic detection of oceanographic phenomena, Object Based Image Analysis, image processing algorithms and coastal mapping. He is an author of more than 50 refereed papers in international scientific journals, member of editorial board and referee in several scientific journals, principal investigator in international research projects. During the last years he has focused on fighting marine plastics from the coastal area.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- EESS - IEE
Contact
- Prof. Devis Tuia