A new artificial intelligence (AI), developed in Switzerland, detects plastic in the sea using satellite images. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) announced on Thursday that it could help systematically rid the oceans of plastic waste using ships.
The AI model, jointly developed by researchers from EPFL and Wageningen University in the Netherlands, estimates the probability of the presence of waste for each individual pixel in satellite images.
Satellites transmit terabytes of data to Earth
The build-up of marine debris is visible in the European Space Agency’s freely available Sentinel-2 satellite images, but since terabytes of data are involved, this data must be automatically analyzed using AI models, the scientists said.
Works even under difficult weather conditions
The new AI is more successful than previous models, EPFL said. And this even in difficult atmospheric conditions with clouds and mist. This is especially important because plastics are often washed into open water after rain, the researchers report in the journal ‘Cell iScience’.
The space mission “Sentinel-2”, consisting of the identical Earth observation satellites “Sentinel-2A” and “Sentinel-2B”. They are part of the EU’s Copernicus program for global monitoring for environment and security and provide data for climate protection, land monitoring and disaster and crisis management on Earth.
Source: Krone
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