A smart multimodal innovative model for marine environmental monitoring

Hydrocarbon pollution represents one of the most serious issues for the health and entirety of the extremely fragile marine ecosystem, thus, the strategies for its monitoring have been grown in number and complexity in the last decades. Therefore, the realization of systems able to detect the presence of pollutants in the marine environment has become extremely complex, involving different figures and integrated know-hows. This paper presents an innovative model for the real-time assessment of pollutants on sea surface based on a network of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), also able to sail the sea surface, equipped with sensors, capable of detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by hydrocarbons. In particular, within this context, an AUV equipped with an E-Nose-like system is proposed, with the sensors employed that were characterized both on laboratory bench and at sea. The results obtained confirmed the feasibility of the approach proposed as well as a good reliability of the data acquired, confirming the likely employment of this system within an integrated marine monitoring tool.