Know where the debris is gathering before you send a vessel.
Early access: event-driven maps of floating plastic and debris windrows, flagged from their spectral signature in wide-swath multispectral imagery.
- GSD
- 10–30 m (Wide)
- Cadence
- event driven
- Platform
- wide-swath satellite
- Spectral
- multispectral
How a search area gets drawn today
You are planning a cruise or a cleanup sortie, and the ship is booked. The search area comes from a drift forecast, a few sighting reports from other vessels and wherever the material turned up last time. You draw a box around the most likely water, and the vessel runs survey legs through it to find out where the debris has really gathered.
Windrows do not always sit where the forecast says. A line of floating material can be a long way from the middle of the box, and the legs that cross it are the ones that pay off. Every leg that crosses empty water is sea time spent on a guess. If the first box was wrong, the ship either widens the search or goes home with less than the grant or the campaign needed.
Sometimes a colleague pulls up a satellite image and looks for slicks by eye. That helps, but it is one person on one scene.
What this offers is a first look before the ship sails. After a storm or a flood event, or once you have named a pilot area, the map flags the stretches of water whose surface looks debris-consistent, so the search box starts from something observed.
What a pilot-list project includes
Pilot-list projects are scoped one area at a time. This is the planned scope, and the details are still being settled project by project.
- 2.1
Candidate aggregation zone mapMap layer
The flagged zones in your tasked area, drawn where the surface signature looks consistent with floating debris windrows. Opens in QGIS or ArcGIS. Each zone is a candidate, and nothing on the map says what the material is.
- 2.2
Dated overlay
Each map is tied to the event or request that triggered it and to the date of the image behind it, so you can see how old the read is against your drift forecast and your sailing date.
- 2.3
Positions for your planCoordinates
Candidate zone positions as a list you can load as waypoints for a ground-truthing leg or a cleanup run. Your own drift model and route tools stay in charge of the track.
How it works
Name the area or the event
Tell us the stretch of water and what set it off, such as a storm, a river flood or a planned cruise. Say what you will use the map for.
We task a pass
A wide-swath multispectral pass is lined up for the area. The clearest usable image decides what the map can show.
The surface is read for debris
The water surface is analyzed for bands whose signature is consistent with floating debris windrows, and the lookalikes are flagged as such.
Candidate zones come back
You get the zone map, the dated overlay and the positions. A specialist goes through what was flagged with you before the vessel is committed.
Where it fits
The map feeds the planning step. Research teams can use it to place survey legs on a cruise plan. Cleanup operators can use it to choose which stretch of water a vessel should work first. A team with a wide area to cover can screen it before committing ship time to a manual search.
Limits
These are the ways a spectral map of floating debris can mislead you.
- Candidate, not confirmed
- Seaweed, sea foam, natural organic slicks and plastic can look alike from orbit. Only a vessel, drone or sample can say what a flagged zone holds. Ground-truthing is part of the plan, and the map is there to tell you where to do it.
- Zones, not items
- At 10–30 m a pixel is larger than most of the things floating in it. The map finds bands of gathered material, not bottles, nets or single objects. A windrow narrower than a pixel may blur into the water around it.
- No count, no weight
- The map does not estimate how much material is there, by piece, tonnage or volume.
- Cloud and glint decide the date
- Cloud hides the surface, and sun glint can wash it out. The pass used is the clearest one available for your area, and some events will not have a usable image soon after.
- Event driven, not a feed
- Maps are made when you ask for an area or an event. There is no standing monitor and no fixed revisit.
- Early access
- This is a pilot list. Scope and timing are agreed project by project.
Who it's for
Who it's for
- Marine research scientists planning where to put survey legs on a cruise.
- Cleanup-operation planners choosing where to send a vessel first.
- Teams that want to screen a wide area before they commit ship time to a manual search.
Who it's not for
- Teams that need a count or a weight of plastic. The map has neither.
- Teams that need confirmation of what the material is without sending anyone out to check.
- Continuous monitoring. There is no always-on feed.
- Item-level detection, such as a single net or container. The pixels are too large for that.
Questions from planners and scientists
Does it count or weigh the plastic?
No. It flags candidate aggregation zones. It does not report pieces, tonnage or volume.
Can it tell plastic from seaweed or foam?
Not on its own. Flagged zones need ground-truthing, and lookalikes are marked as such where they can be told apart.
What resolution is it working at?
10–30 m, wide-swath. It finds zones of gathered material, not individual items.
Is this a standing service today?
No. It is an early-access pilot list. Projects are scoped one area at a time.
How do we check it against our own data?
Send us your sighting reports or ground-truth positions for the area and the dated overlay can be read against them. Your own vessel legs are the real test of a flagged zone.
Will it work with our drift forecast and route tools?
It does not replace them. The positions come as a list you can load next to your own trajectory output.
Who owns the maps?
Use and ownership terms for the delivered layers are written into the agreement before work starts. Licences on the underlying imagery are covered there too.
How is it priced?
Pilot projects are scoped on their own, by area and by what you want from it. A specialist will go through the terms with you.