Drones against the risk from uncontrolled abandonment of waste containing asbestos. The DroMEP project.

Drones of various shapes, sizes, and functionalities have emerged over the past few decades, and their civilian applications are becoming increasingly appealing. Flexible, low-cost, and high-resolution remote sensing systems that use drones as platforms are important for filling data gaps and supplementing the capabilities of crewed/manned aircraft and satellite remote sensing systems. The benefits of drone remote sensing include low material and operational costs, flexible control of spatial and temporal resolution, high-intensity data collection, and the absence of risk to crews. Here, we refer to this growing remote sensing initiative as drone remote sensing and explain its unique advantages in monitoring and environmental protection research and practices: in this case study we report the application of a drone to land monitoring aimed at identifying the presence of asbestos in friable matrix in piles of waste abandoned in inaccessible areas like ephemeral watershed of the typical karst landscape of Apulia and other protected areas.