Event workshop

Side Event @ ESA Φ-lab PHInovation Summit

General information

Seeing the Invisible: Low-Resolution EO for Urban Environmental Hazard Detection

Description and scope

Environmental hazards such as asbestos-containing materials (ACM) and methane emissions represent major public health and climate risks, yet systematic large-scale monitoring remains limited. Hyperspectral sensors offer precise spectral fingerprinting, but their narrow swath, low revisit frequency, and high operational cost constrain scalability. Meanwhile, low- and medium-resolution multispectral satellites — Sentinel-2, Landsat, PRISMA, Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI — provide global, near-daily coverage at no cost.

The central question this side event poses is: how far can low-resolution EO data, augmented by AI, go in detecting hazardous environmental materials at operational scale?

Date and place

ESA PHInovation Innovation Summit 2026

Monday, 23 June 2026 · 14:00–15:00 CEST

ESA-ESRIN, Frascati, Italy

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Topic

Themes

Asbestos mapping from multispectral imagery: using Sentinel-2 spectral bands, texture features, and machine learning classifiers to identify legacy ACM rooftops in urban areas without requiring full hyperspectral acquisition

Methane and trace gas detection: leveraging SWIR bands (Sentinel-2) and coarse-resolution atmospheric retrievals (TROPOMI / Sentinel-5P) to localise point-source CH₄ emissions and bridge global atmospheric data with urban-scale monitoring

Generalisability across hazards: exploring whether analogous spectral and spatial proxy approaches extend to heavy metal contamination indicators, hydrocarbon spills, or industrial dust plumes

AI as the resolution bridge: how deep learning, transfer learning, and data fusion can compensate for spectral and spatial limitations when high-resolution hyperspectral data is unavailable

Objectives

• Present the state of the art in low-resolution EO-based environmental hazard detection

• Critically examine the trade-offs: spatial vs. spectral resolution, temporal revisit, model generalisation

• Surface open challenges: sensor domain adaptation, scarce labelled data, false positive rates in complex urban scenes

• Connect researchers, data providers, AI developers, and end-user communities (civil protection, urban planning, insurance, environmental agencies)

Target audience

Remote sensing scientists, AI/ML engineers, environmental risk modellers, ESA data exploitation teams, start-ups in environmental monitoring, and policy-oriented attendees from public administrations or NGOs.

Committee

Organizers and program committee

Dr.Diletta Chiaro (Lead chair)


Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy
Data Scientist


diletta.chiaro@latitudo40.com

Paolo De Piano


Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy
Head of Data Science


paolo.depiano@latitudo40.com

Relevance to PHiNovation

This session sits at the intersection of Computational Imaging, Artificial Intelligence / ML, and Earth Observation for societal impact — three core pillars of the Φ-lab innovation agenda.
Dates

Important dates and
logistic

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Summit

ESA PHInovation Innovation Summit 2026

Side event date

23 June 2026

Time slot

14:00–15:00 CEST

Location

ESA ESRIN / PHInovation venue (see summit programme)

Summit programme

https://philab.esa.int/phinnovation/#programme

Contact

Contact information

Dr.Diletta Chiaro

Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy — Data Scientist


diletta.chiaro@latitudo40.com

Paolo De Piano

Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy — Head of Data Science


paolo.depiano@latitudo40.com