METHODS FOR IDENTIFICATION AND VISUALIZATION OF MUNICIPAL WASTE DISPOSAL SITES USING AEROSPACE DATA

Abstract

With the increase of temperatures in the summer, the danger of self-ignition of landfills for household waste increases, because of the biochemical processes that take place inside them. The most recent example is the municipal landfill for non-hazardous waste near the town of Dupnitsa. The self-ignition started on July 23, 2021 and continued to smolder for almost a week, which led to a great danger of burning the area around it or poisoning the population. It is believed that one of the main reasons is the great depth of the accumulated waste. There is an urgent need to do quality control of most of the landfills for municipal waste in our country. Some of them are located next to major river arteries or international roads. Non-compliance with the requirements for maintenance, management and operation hides a serious potential for an ecological catastrophe. It is essential that stricter measures are taken and that these landfills are monitored. The aim of the present work is to reveal the possibilities and potential of aerospace data and to show different methods for processing, interpretation, and visualization. They can easily identify, map, and survey a waste disposal site. Optical images of the multispectral instrument (MSI) of the Sentinel 2 platform and radar (SAR) data from the Sentinel 1 platform of the Copernicus program of the European Space Agency were used. Thermal bands from the Landsat 5 - 7 (ETM) and Landsat 8 (OLI/TIRS) sensors of the Landsat program were used to calculate the land surface temperature. Satellite images have been orthogonized, and composite images between optical and radar data have been created for better visualization.