GPW

Global Plastic Watch

Minderoo Foundation, Earthrise Media

Description

Uses satellite imagery from European Space Agency with artificial intelligence to map global plastic waste sites in near real-time. Source code and data available at related site: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.01485.

The current version of the GPW collects the following data points:

  • Location of formal and informal land-based waste aggregations containing plastic waste, including micro dumpsites (as small as 25 m2)
  • Validation of land-based waste aggregations through Google Street view or high-resolution satellite imagery
  • Temporal trends in the extent of the surface area of land-based waste aggregations, month-to-month as far back as early 2017
  • Proximity of land-based waste aggregations to rivers and water bodies, including 12 metadata parameters that are relevant in terms of leakage, including upstream drainage area, slope, and soil composition

Notes

Data and Code available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.01485