Two experts from the University of Coimbra (UC) will support the fight against marine litter in Japan through drones and artificial intelligence (AI) developed in the “UAS4Litter” project, the higher education institution revealed this Friday.
Guidelines for monitoring marine litter on Japanese coastal beaches will be discussed by a group of international experts on Monday and Tuesday at a meeting organized by the Japanese Ministry of Environment (MOEJ) in Tokyo.
According to the UC, it is the second meeting that brings together the Smart Marine Litter Remote Sensing Technology (SmartMLRST) group and aims to achieve the objectives set at the G20 summit, held in 2019 under the auspices of the “Osaka Blue Ocean Vision”., and which aims, by 2050, to reduce pollution caused by marine debris, including plastics, to zero.
The definition of guidelines for monitoring marine debris, using remote sensing technologies, will allow “the standardization of the methods to be used in monitoring, providing comparable data on the current distribution, quantification and composition of debris, including plastics, in the marine environment, which are essential in the implementation of mitigation measures,” stated, quoted in the statement, the professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) and researcher at the Institute of Systems Engineering and Coimbra Informatics (INESC-Coimbra) Gil Goncalves.
According to another member of SmartMLRST, also a researcher at INESC-Coimbra, Umberto Andriolo, the group’s role consists of “sharing and transferring the knowledge acquired”, within the framework of the UAS4Litter project, in order to “define guidelines relating to the monitoring of marine waters”. garbage from the beaches of the Japanese coast, using drones and AI.
UAS4Litter was a research project that was “innovative in the development, implementation and testing of a framework (structure) based on low-cost drones for the detection, identification and mapping of marine litter in beach-dune systems,” he noted.
According to the FCTUC duo, “flying a drone equipped with a digital camera (RGB and/or multispectral), at an altitude of 20 meters, structure The proposal covers the generation of two geospatial products that allow studying the dynamics of marine litter, as well as the detection and identification of litter in orthomosaics (or images) using manual and automatic methods based on AI, the production of litter maps marine that can serve. also in the optimization of cleaning operations and the integration of the morphology of beaches and dunes and environmental forces (waves, tide and wind), to characterize the abundance and dynamics of marine litter in coastal systems.”
At the meeting, in addition to standardizing the guidelines to be adopted in monitoring marine debris with remote sensing technologies, each of the available technologies will be analyzed: satellite, plane, balloon, webcams and smartphones.
However, special emphasis will be placed on drone technology, as it constitutes “one of the most promising tools for monitoring marine debris, with dimensions greater than 2.5 cm.” [centímetros]on beaches and coastal areas.
Like this agreement with the Ministry of Justice and Justice, the protocol developed within the framework of the UAS4Litter project was also presented to the Public Ministry of the State of São Paulo (MPSP), which intends to implement it in the monitoring of marine litter in coastal areas. . from Guarajá, in Brazil.
Source: TSF
