IRIS mission: tackling the problem of climate change by monitoring water areas' pollution
- Paper number
GLOC-2023,T,IP,x74940
- Author
Mr. Alessio Bocci, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Marco Gonella, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Ms. Rashika Sugganahalli Natesh Babu, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Songzheng Jiang, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Year
2023
- Abstract
This work aims to take advantage of IRIS technology to tackle climate change. IRIS (Imaging of pollution tRaces In the Seas) is an orbital-based, hyperspectral (VIS and NIR/SWIR) camera designed ad hoc to detect and monitor litter (plastic and oil spills) in the Mediterranean Sea. Thanks to a precise push-broom scanning mechanism for LEO satellites (with a 30 cm resolution in the VIS channel and a 1 m resolution in the IR channel), this technology is highly versatile. It allows for implementations in different water areas. This work will enlarge the range of achievable secondary objectives of the IRIS remote-sensing mission, offering an effective climate-change-related service to customers. To do so, IRIS relies on several temperature measurements to identify the Mediterranean climate change hotspots. Temperature is considered the driving parameter due to its relation to plastic decomposition. High-temperature gradients cause plastic litter to release harmful greenhouse gases and ease microplastics' formation. In addition to marring the sea and leaching toxic chemicals, microplastics affect the food chain phytoplankton-zooplankton, inhibiting the fundamental Biological Carbon Pump (BCP). The operational scheme for data integration and processing is the following. The previous design (presented at IAC 2022) enabled IRIS to provide a high-accuracy identification of the regions with the highest pollutants concentration (pollution hotspots). From this information, IRIS performs a preliminary temperature mapping, relying on other operating satellites' measurements to define a first guess of the climate change hotspots. Thanks to the acquired IR images, IRIS extracts its own temperature measurements and compares them with those available externally to identify the most probable climate change hotspots. As it is not evident that the most polluted areas are major contributors to climate change, a crucial analysis between pollution hotspots and climate change hotspots is provided to establish a correct correlation. The work is divided into three parts. The first aim is to improve the earlier satellite constellation design (31 satellites equally spaced in a sun-synchronous circular orbit at 636 km altitude) to reduce the number of required spacecraft, without compromising the area coverage. The second undergoes a deep revisitation of leading technologies to establish the most efficient way to employ IR images for our purposes. Finally, a suitable design of the identification mechanisms, with particular attention to the choosing criteria rationale during the Mediterranean Sea litter-temperature mapping, is provided.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
GLOC-2023,T,IP,x74940.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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