
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?
• 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
• 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)
Committee
Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy
Data Scientist
diletta.chiaro@latitudo40.com
Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy
Head of Data Science
paolo.depiano@latitudo40.com
ESA PHInovation Innovation Summit 2026
23 June 2026
14:00–15:00 CEST
ESA ESRIN / PHInovation venue (see summit programme)
Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy — Data Scientist
diletta.chiaro@latitudo40.com
Affiliation: Latitudo 40, Naples, Italy — Head of Data Science
paolo.depiano@latitudo40.com