Team of experts to conduct a UAV-based litter monitoring assessment of two study areas in Thailand

1.     SHORT PROFILE OF THE CONTRACTING BODY AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION

WWF Germany is an independent, non-profit, charitable and legal foundation under civil law based in Berlin. The organization was founded in 1963 and officially registered on March 23, 1973 as the “Foundation for the Protection and Development of the Natural Environment”. WWF Germany is part of the WWF network, which operates in over 100 countries and consists of national organizations and program offices.

In line with the responsibility of all peoples for nature conservation and environmental protection as an economic, social, scientific and cultural task announced by the United Nations, WWF Germany has set itself the goal of protecting nature and the environment and promoting environmental issues. WWF Germany is active worldwide.

2.     INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE PLANNED STUDY

The assignment will be part of the project ‘Marine litter prevention through reduction, sustainable design and recycling of plastic packaging (MARE DESIGN)’, jointly implemented by the WWF, GIZ and UNEP COBSEA with financial support from the German Ministry of the Environment (BMUV) in Thailand.

Under the project, the WWF aims to improve the avoidance, management and recycling of plastic wastes on Koh Tao, in Trang city and select tourism hotspots in Trang province. Focus is on supporting municipalities and actors from the tourism sector in setting and reaching ambitious goals for better plastic waste management and avoidance, in order to reduce waste leakage to the ocean. Further information can be obtained here:

Website WWF: WWF-Projekt zur Reduzierung des Meeresmülls

Website of the Thai-German cooperation: Marine Litter Prevention through reduction, sustainable design, and recycling of plastic packaging (MA-RE-DESIGN)

3.     INTRODUCTION

Marine plastic pollution. The world’s oceans are filling with plastic. It has been estimated that about 8 to 11 million tonnes of plastic enter the marine environment every year. Plastic pollution is already having a devastating impact on life in the marine environment, and it is also negatively affecting communities that depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. In the long term, the leakage of plastic into the environment is also problematic from a resource-perspective and it undermines the prospects for creating a circular economy.  Stopping leakage of plastics into nature is a prerequisite for creating a circular economy. Asia is the region most impacted by the global plastic pollution crisis. Estimates show that eight out of the ten top polluting countries are in Asia. The rapid growth in plastic pollution is having significant consequences for the environment, human health, economies and communities in the region. Plastic pollution harms marine life, undermines economic activities and livelihoods, plugs rivers and drainage, affects soil quality and impacts health and sanitation, and creates disease breeding grounds.

Sources of marine debris. The sources of marine litter and possible exposition paths into the marine environment are diverse and the correlation between them is complex. One of the general distinctions between sources is the categorization into land-based and sea-based sources. According to various studies, land-based sources of marine litter make up the larger portion with a share of approx. 80%. Possible land-based sources are insufficient waste collection, littering, untreated sewage and rainwater discharges, and industrial and production facilities. But also waste that is collected can be released back into the environment due to improper disposal practices, as it is the case, for example, with dumpsites or unsecured landfills. Improper operation or the lack of barriers can result in waste being released due to weather effects, i.e. wind or floods. Although these entry pathways are qualitatively known, there is still little data on the extent to which they individually contribute to marine litter.

Project context. Thailand is one of the top ten countries globally contributing to ocean plastics^[1], while also experiencing its negative impacts on marine wildlife and the economically important tourism industry. Government of Thailand has enacted policies, notably the Roadmap on Plastic Waste Management 2018-2030 and associated Action Plan (Phase II), to reduce the generation of plastic waste as well as to improve overall waste management, including to reduce plastic leakage to the ocean. A law on packaging, imbibing the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility, is under development.

Between 2023 and 2025, GiZ, UNEP COBSEA and the WWF are supporting those national efforts through a project financially supported by the Federal Ministry for the Environment of Germany. Within this joint endeavour, the WWF works with the municipalities of Trang city and Koh Tao as well as actors from the tourism sector on Koh Tao and in Pak Meng, Koh Libong and Koh Muk (Trang province) to strengthen local waste management and recycling efforts and to reduce the amount of waste generated there and leaking into the sea.

Between March and October 2024, an assessment of municipal solid waste flows has been conducted in Koh Tao and Trang municipalities, based on the Waste Flow Diagram methodology.

Needs. In a second step, an up-to-date and accurate assessment of the amounts and composition of waste leaking into the marine environment, specifically the Environmental Protected Area/ Marine National Park close to the municipalities, as well as the prevailing leakage paths in those municipalities is essential to inform mitigatory actions and strategies for the mid- to long-term. The municipal administrations do not currently monitor littering, so neither data is available nor a methodology established.

Validated and globally-applied methods for land-based litter monitoring are typically based on systematic manual waste collection and analysis, such as the International Coastal Cleanup’s area-based beach clean-up method and the transect-based litter monitoring proposed by CSIRO. Depending on the amount of voluntary work involved, the geographical scope and level of detail, such assessments are more or less capacity/time-intensive, representative, accurate and insightful.

In recent years, new remote sensing-supported approaches have been developed and trialed, notably the analysis of satellite imagery with neural networks and, more recently, the likewise machine learning-enabled analysis of images from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). While the former is used to identify (informal) waste agglomerations at-risk from leakage, e.g. due to proximity to a water body, at a higher geographical scale, the latter allows for an identification of smaller, individual macro-plastic items in terms of their type, level of integrity, size, estimated weight and even brand at a lower geographical scale. UAV- or drone-based municipal or beach litter monitoring can also be used to validate manual litter monitoring approaches in terms of the monitoring sites and frequency, thereby supporting the establishment of efficient yet fairly representative and accurate local litter monitoring routines.

For the assignment at hand, WWF is seeking an academic institution, think tank or consultancy with a proven track record in the field to conduct a drone-based monitoring study of macro plastic litter on the two municipalities.

4. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The main objective of the assignment is to obtain a detailed understanding of:

a) leakage paths of plastic litter into the marine environment,

b) litter hotspots and, more generally, the geographical distribution of litter across the sites, and

c) the share of different waste items (e.g. plastic bottles, bags, lids),

To inform short-term mitigatory action and the development of mid- to long-term strategies in the two partner municipalities.

A secondary objective is to support the development of transect-based municipal macro-litter monitoring routines in both municipalities, by validating the choice of monitored sites, the timing/ temporal intervals and other relevant criteria.

5. SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The scope of the assignment includes (see below for details):

·       The selection of representative survey sites (e.g. streets, green spaces, drains, river banks, beaches) within the study areas, in agreement with the contracting authority;

·       The identification and ingestion of previously available relevant visual image material, e.g. from smart-phones or public surveillance cameras;

·       A drone-based survey of the selected sites;

·       An AI-enabled analysis of the litter found with an accuracy level of 90%; as well as

·       a summary of the results in a study report (see 5. Scope for further details).

The geographical scope of the assignment covers:

a.     the municipality of Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, which covers the entire island. Here, monitored sites should include streets/roads, public and green spaces, drains/watercourses and beaches; 

b.     the municipality of Trang, capital city of Trang province. Here, monitored sites should include streets/roads, public and green spaces, drains/watercourses within the administrative area of the municipality. It should possibly also include stretches of the Trang river outside the municipality’s boundaries to the extent needed to ascertain leakage paths and estimated quantities of plastic litter from Trang city reaching the marine environment.

Quality criteria for the survey and analysis include:

·       The survey should feature a spatial resolution with a Ground Sampling Data (GSD) of 0.2 – 0.5. Note: The minimum possible flight altitude given the local topography and land-uses as well as applicable national law has to be taken into account in the choice of devices;

·       The proven level of accuracy in the recognition and classification of at least 20 different types of the most commonly-found plastic litter items should be 90% or higher. Further information on the litter found would be considered an added value;

The assignment should be carried out in three phases or steps:

Phase I – Conceptual development, planning and preparation

●      Development of a litter monitoring concept, including:

o   A proposed sample of monitoring sites representative of different land-uses, population densities and littering/ leakage situations, taking into consideration environmental conditions, topography, spatial and temporal land-use patterns;

o   The number and timing of surveys, taking into account annual wind/storm and rainfall patterns;

o   The analytical framework, i.e. litter and site characterisation. The concept is to be discussed and agreed with the contracting authority;

Phase II – Data collection / survey:

●      Field deployment of drones, ie. aerial survey of the agreed monitoring sites;

Phase III – Analysis and communication of assessment results

●      Machine learning-enabled analysis of the image material collected (cf. quality criteria above);

●      Verification of the analysis through comparison of the AI classification results with a manual analysis of a random sample of images;

●      Documentation of findings in an appropriate form (e.g. leakage paths and litter hotspots should be documented in the form of maps, findings on item classification in a table);

·       Online presentation of the analysis results to local stakeholders

An alternative approach can be proposed, provided a science-based explanation is provided.

The responsibilities of the contractor include the implementation of the assessment in line with the agreed-upon timeline and budget, as well as documentation and communication with WWF Germany as the contracting authority and WWF Thailand as the main project-implementing partner.

6.     TIMELINE AND DELIVERABLES

The indicative timeline for the assignment is as follows:

Bidders are requested to submit a detailed schedule aligned with this timeline. Deviations can be proposed if justified.