Sea Pollution: Analysis and Monitoring using Unmanned Vehicles

The planet earth mainly consists of water, and monitoring and controlling pollution is essential. To ensure the surveillance and control of illegal or accidental spills of dangerous and harmful substances into the sea at the European level, the CleanSeaNet satellite monitoring system (service) was developed and implemented by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). This system’s main objective is to alert coastal states of possible spills in their Exclusive Economic Zone, thus allowing the necessary legal and combat actions (cleaning) to be taken in the affected area. A drift model for the spill behavior over time was proposed to be able to act on the right location, considering the existing weather conditions. In addition to verifying the areas most affected by spills and how they behave over time, considering the weather conditions, it is also necessary to propose a national network of unmanned vehicles (air and surface) that allows us to reduce costs and optimize monitoring and control tasks. It is shown that we could quickly decrease the response time and operational costs with the developed approach.