Big plastic masses detection using satellite images & machine learning

This communication describes a preliminary research on detection of big masses of plastic (marine litter) on the oceans and seas using EO (Earth Observation) satellite systems. Free images from the Sentinel 2 (Copernicus Project) platform are used. To develop a plastic recognizer, we start with an image where we can fnd a big accumulation of “non-foating” plastic: Almería. We made a test using remote sensing diferential indexes, but we got much better results using all available wavelengths (thirteen bands) and applying Machine Learning (Neural Networks). Keywords – satellite, Earth Observation, Neural Networks.