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