Geospatial Intelligence for Environment Protection against Illegal Activities

This action aims to initiate and develop activities that support the investigation of information needs of public and private entities and the application of remote sensing and geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) methods to address those information needs related to illegal activities affecting the environment.

For this activity, GEOINT principles and artificial intelligence will be used to solve problems related to environmental compliance. In this way, current challenges will be answered on the one hand, and on the other hand, strong incentives will be created for a new category of user organizations at national and EU level. The following topics will be considered in more detail in the activity:

• Waste crime: The ever-growing problem of waste crime is one of the prioritized fields for which solutions based on GEOINT have been proposed. While detection of waste locations using satellite data has mostly based on costly, high spatial resolution imagery, Sentinel-1 and -2, PRISMA as well as the upcoming missions EnMAP and possibly CHIME offer new opportunities for global waste detection on a regular and cost-free basis, making it affordable to a wide range of new users such as environmental agencies worldwide, especially in developing countries
• Forest crime: Global reports on the state of forests have shown that there are many illegal activities to solve, including logging of protected species and habitats; logging in prohibited areas such as steep slopes, riverbanks, and water bodies; or setting woodlands on fire to use them for commercial purposes. Research studies have shown that Earth Observation (EO) can assist in detecting forest crime through changes in forest cover.
• Illegal building/construction: This refers to the construction of an entire building on unsealed land (natural, semi-natural, or agricultural land) without a permit, sometimes on land designated as a non-building area, or the unauthorized expansion of an existing building. To prevent these illegal activities, it is essential to provide local authorities and municipalities with relevant monitoring tools that can promptly alert them to new artificial land cover changes in their area.
• Estimation of illegal manure spreading: the application of zootechnical effluents to fertilize soils represents a source of ammonia emissions to the atmosphere, which is a precursor to particulate matter, and results in excess nitrates in surface waters and groundwater. The action aims to develop an application that, starting from satellite data combined with in-situ information, will allow to map the illegal spreading of sewage and sludge.
• Air Pollution: Air quality is a major issue for all major cities in the world. Traffic- and industry-related air pollution is particularly prevalent in areas with high population densities. Disguised as home appliance imports, large amounts of waste enter EU countries and are then burned uncontrollably, causing severe air pollution. The main approach is to detect and monitor illegal burning of uncollected waste via the fusion of EO data with official and alternative in-situ information (drones, sensors, geotagged photos, etc.), reports from authorities and investigative journalists, and relevant excerpts from social media.
• Water: Water bodies are especially in need of environmental monitoring. Illegal activities such as the discharge of pollutants into the dam, which can significantly affect the water supply and therefore the health of the public, must be monitored. Coastal and marine areas are also at risk from pollution. There is a great need to monitor illegal marine activities, such as illegal dumping, oil spills, marine litter, etc., which result in pollution of coastal areas.