Identifying shoreline marine debris currently depends on helicopters and personnel using binoculars. This approach is inefficient, costly, and time-consuming. To address these limitations, the project aimed to develop a more effective solution using artificial intelligence to detect and classify debris in drone-captured 4K video footage. Once debris detections are made, the system uses the location data from the drone video to generate a map that highlights marine debris hotspots. These hotspots represent priority areas with the highest density of debris, helping First Nation communities in northern British Columbia to plan scalable, efficient, and cost-effective cleanups.
