Aerospace-based support systems and interoperability: the solution to fight illegal dumping

Every year in Italy, hundreds of illegal dumping activities are detected but it is believed that there could be up to 10 times more, where the majority go undetected and are never penalized. New administrative measures against illegal dumping need to be developed that involve patrolling for illegal dump sites and dumping activities, and developing new databases for documenting their existence. This paper introduces an aerospace-based support system to fight illegal dumping and to help local governments to study their environmental impact, mapping the results of the investigations as well as collecting site specific information. Currently a wide variety of aerospace platforms (satellites, aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial systems, etc.) are available to monitor environmental problems, but their real effectiveness is often limited due to the capability of the on-board sensors. The availability of a high altitude viewing platform provides broad coverage, but often the technical limitations of the sensors require a mission profile close to the target to acquire high resolution data. Currently, the Italian Aerospace Research Center is developing a system, entitled "Aerospace Interoperability Framework", that provides a complete framework composed of flight and ground segments, communication links, acquisition sensors, mission paradigm logic and scheduling, data acquisition paradigm and logic, and data processing. A detailed overview of this aerospace-based support system and criticalities associated with discovering illegal landfills will be introduced in this paper and, particularly, the improvements to the patrolling services by the administrative staff