Optical and SAR data synergistic use for landfill detection and monitoring. The SIMDEO project: Methods, products and results

The monitoring of cataloged landfills and the detection of uncontrolled dump sites is becoming a crucial environmental issue in all European countries. Remote Sensing application has been demonstrated to be helpful in mitigating the problem of landfills monitoring and in the continuous surveillance of known waste disposal sites. In previous works [1][2][3], the suitability of EO data exploitation, coming from SAR and Optical sensors, has been tested to be an important key factor in providing valid information to the local stakeholders for the identification, classification and monitoring of contaminated sites using non-invasive methods. The present paper aims to describe the consolidated and validated results obtained in the framework of the SIMDEO project, co-funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Euro Soft srl (contract n. I/055/11/0), detailing the algorithms adopted and describing the output products validated using ground-truth data.