Monitoring marine bound debris using UAS on the US-Mexico Border

The Tijuana river estuary suffers from overwhelming solid-waste contamination such as marine bound plastics, tires, and sediment. Funded by the US EPA's Border 2020 program (SOLTA-C-19-008), this project intends to establish a framework for bi-national monitoring of trans-boundary, marine bound trash (TBMBT) using light-weight unmanned aerial systems (UASs), also known as drones. The developed framework is intended to benefit 1) border authorities through the establishment of a low-cost, minimally invasive, operational standard to monitor TBMBT in coastal ecosystems and optimize upstream trash capture interventions, 2) natural habitat in the Tijuana River Valley (TRV) and TRE through the identification of trash hotspots to guide clean-up operations, and 3) visitors and residents of the TRV and TRE through the long term benefits of reduced trash volumes from optimized interventions. Three surveys were carried out between 2020 and 2021 collecting data on trash locations using drones and ground-based smartphones. Drone imagery was processed to extract locations of trash using image classification algorithms, while ground-based data was used to complement the data collected from drones and to validate the accuracy of the drone generated data.