TECH

Portuguese company uses satellite to identify environmental crimes
The project was born of the frustration of the French Robin Bouvier who, after years of working as a legal advisor to an environmental organization, found that most environmental protection laws were not met and decided to move forward with something to improve the enforcement of protection laws of the environment in Europe, told the agency Lusa the head of CybELE, a company that is headquartered in DNA Cascais and is incubated by ESA BIC Portugal.
The initial idea was to create a database to develop the link between citizens and experts in environmental law, but after specializing in Space Law, found in remote sensing technologies a "great tool to improve the collection of evidence for the investigative forces, "he explained.
The project "implements a complete and unique data analysis process, which improves the understanding of a simple satellite image", he said.
"Image processing is tailor-made for customers and allows a visual idea of ​​the type of environmental damage and its impact. For example, a 'mask' can be generated to highlight the presence of deforestation or illegal logging in a region or to identify the chemical components in oil spills or other soil pollution, "he said.
According to Robin Bouvier, CybELE's technology saves money and time spent on investigating such evidence, as well as identifying and calculating the costs of environmental damage caused, generating reports based on a satellite data analysis, "written accurately and comprehensively evidence in the context of judicial proceedings. "
Apart from this tool may be useful for law firms and insurance companies, the company manager hopes that the technology can also facilitate the work of non-governmental organizations, governments or international associations working in this area.
At the moment, CybELE already has "requests from local administrations to monitor coasts and rivers and is developing partnerships with international research agencies," he said.
In addition, it is already working on cases to detect illegal discharges into the seas, to identify cases of pollution from mining and to monitor deforestation and destruction of habitats.
"With this new generation of satellites, our analysis will gain a lot of accuracy," he said. "This technology allows us to monitor a large area at a distance, but much more can be done to improve the accuracy of satellite images.
In 2018, CybELE won the main prize of the European competition Copernicus Masters, which awards products and services that use Earth observation data and the European satellite Copernicus. Lusa Agency