GIS and infrared aerial view: Advanced tools for the early detection of environmental violations

Environmental violation is an illegal act that harms the environment or endangers public health, offending federal, state or local laws. When the environmental violation is excessive or the violator is a repeat offender, it evolves into environmental crime. Environmental crime is a relatively new concept and is ever changing. To guarantee the safety and security of the public, environmental laws regulate all activities that have a negative effect on human health, harm a community or the environment. The citizens' exposure to pollution and/or to dangerous wastes is a major public health problem; therefore, public authorities must act as quickly as possible to identify such environmental issues. An early identification of environmental criticalities would reduce citizens' exposure risks and remediation costs. The most suitable solution to detecting environmental criticalities and preventing environmental crime is targeted and effective environmental monitoring. In this paper it will be shown how our integrated system, which includes aerial platforms and ad-hoc sensors (e.g. infrared cameras, multispectral sensors, etc.), can be an effective tool to ensure environmental and human safety and security. Our monitoring and measurement protocol has been developed to answer the needs of environmental enforcement. Thus the technique demonstrated here can ensure a wide coverage area, is cost effective, in terms both of time and money, and provides highly precise measurements with few false alarms. The proposed procedures, techniques and technologies were tested and validated in environmental police actions directed by Italian government bodies (Public Prosecutor, Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, Financial Police, Forest Rangers etc.) in real, in the field operations.