Monitoring Beached Marine Litter With UAV: Advances in Detection Techniques and Citizen Science Contributions

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) are being used for mapping Macro-Litter in the environment. Images require a manual processing for detecting marine litter, so it is of interest to evaluate the accuracy of operators in performing this task. Students from Italian secondary schools, so no-expert Citizen Science Operators (CSO), were invited to identify and classify stranded litter items on orthophotos collected on an Italian beach, after a specific training program. The outcoming assessment accuracy of their performances is in line with previous works developed by experts. We deduce that remote detection of marine litter based on UAV images can be improved through citizen science programs, upon an appropriate training plan and provision of specific tools.