Harnessing Technologies in Combatting Environmental Crimes: The Potential of Satellites, Drones, Water Sensors, and Super-Resolution Imaging

Preventing and tackling environmental crime is a global priority. The multiple risks this phenomenon poses, the high-profit margins, low risk of detection and prosecution, and the notable lack of empirical research on specific investigative practices call for innovative approaches to evidence gathering and analysis to ultimately increase the effectiveness of the fight against waste-related environmental crime.

This paper aims to shed light on the range of solutions technology can offer to improve environmental crime detection, investigation and prosecution. Ergo, this paper first presents the main procedural challenges in the uptake of technologies faced by practitioners, followed by a discussion of significant skill gaps in responding to environmental crime as identified by the UN Environmental Program, as well as by the Training Needs Assessment (TNA) and other co-creation activities undertaken within the EMERITUS project.

Secondly, the paper provides a detailed overview of the technologies and techniques EMERITUS employs in fighting environmental crime. These include satellite, drone and sensor technology, and the integration of remote sensing (RS) technologies enhanced with machine learning (ML). The paper concludes by arguing that the further employment of available super-resolution (SR) techniques can unlock the potential for more detailed environmental monitoring and analysis and is valuable for both image classification and segmentation tasks.t