APPLICABILITY OF SATELLITE AND DRONES EO DATA FOR LANDFILLS DETECTION AND MONITORING

SAT+Dron4Landfills is a project which aims to use EO data for effective and timely detection and monitoring of landfills. As a major innovation, two main types of EO data are considered under the project: from existing satellite systems, and from in-situ drone campaigns. EO satellite data will be used to provide relevant information to detect illegal landfills, and also to allow macro-scale monitoring capacities. Data from ad-hoc drone campaigns willprovide closer-to-the-ground, more frequent and cloud coverage independency inputs. The development of a data processing platform is proposed to analyze both sources of data, using advanced AI techniques. Moreover, a User Committee has ben created to raise awareness in the community of waste management users of the capacities that EO could bring for the efficient management of landfills.The project is envisaged as a proof of concept for the demonstration of the proposed solution, with field tests in Torija landfill in Guadalajara, Spain.

The project started in October 2022 with the characterization of landfills in order to select the key parameters that can be extracted for their efficient detection and monitoring, and the initial activities for identifying available EO satellite resources and the definition of the drone campaigns to carry out.