Training Day: Satellite Data for the Protection of the Environment from Illegal Activities

Under the action “Geospatial Intelligence for Environment Protection against Illegal Activities” of the Program “Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake” the Cyprus University of Technology organized the successful workshop “Training Day: Satellite Data for the Protection of the Environment from Illegal Activities” on Wednesday 19th of July 2023. The workshop took place at the Cyprus University of Technology where 25 PhD students, academics and public officials from the following entities attended and actively participated at the workshop (Department of Environment, Department of Fisheries and Marine Research, Shipping Deputy Ministry, Cyprus Civil Defense, SBA Environmental Department, Joint Rescue Coordination Center and Cyprus University of Technology).

The scope of the action and thus of the workshop was to:

• Present Methodologies developed by CUT research staff. CUT researchers presented the techniques they developed regarding the detection, through satellite remote sensing, of illegal activities related to the marine environment.
• Train the attendees about the following:

1. Access to the Copernicus platform,
2. Learning and using the methodologies developed and
3. Discussion and explanation of the results.

In the same way, initially two presentations were made about the FPCUP and the Excelsior Programs. Then Despina Makri prepared a presentation with information about the remote-sensing and Earth Observation which includes a description of available Copernicus data and services, then, she helped the stakeholders to download and access the free available Sentinel data. She explained how to register and search for sentinel images such as type of data, selection of area of interest, Sentinel mission, sensors type, etc. to finally download the selected data for the desirable area of interest. Following Despoina, Thrasyvoulos Stylianou made a presentation which was about the “Detection of Oil Spills with the use of Sentinel – 1 Data”. During his presentation, he showed to the attendees how the oil spills are detected using different platforms and engines like (SNAP, Google Earth Engine and GIS).

Eleftheria Kalogirou, then took the lead and presented and developed the topic “Detection of plastic waste and fish farms in Cyprus”. What is more, she raised the importance of locating marine litters because they:

• Present a number of threats to the environment, economy, health, aesthetics and culture,
• Endanger marine ecosystems and negatively affect marine animals, etc.
• Damage fisheries, aquaculture and coastal tourism industries,
• Present risks to human health also arise.

She mentioned that addressing these threats requires a comprehensive approach that includes waste management and awareness for policy change. Likewise, she presented the detection of plastic waste using data from Sentinel-2. The study areas were the following:

Finally, researchers from ISPRA, Italy, presented online “Case Studies from Italy Manure Spreading, illegal construction and illegal logging”.

Following the presentations, there was a training session where the attendees were trained on the developed workflows as well as learning and accessing the Copernicus platform.

The main achievements of the event was the following:

• Networking of different user entities as well as exploring and setting up new partnerships.
• New user groups for Copernicus data were developed.
• Awareness of potential user organizations through a consistent information package on the capability of Copernicus data and information