Taiwan is surrounded by the ocean and has a rich coastal landform. It brings to various coastal activities but also the accumulation of all kinds of trash brought by the tide and current, climate change, washed out from the land and other human activities. In order to resolve the cleanliness issue of coastal environment, the Executive Yuan approved the “Salute to the Ocean: Coastal Cleanup ＆ Maintenance Program” in 2020 that focuses on five aspects: cleanup, waste reduction, clearance, transparency and education. This program cooperate the ministries and local governments to ensure cleanliness, management and protection towards every inch of the coastline. Meanwhile, as the responsibilities of the units were formulated, issue on how the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPA) enhances its inspection efficiency and strengths were emerged. Currently, the governance units and international environmental groups rely on carrying out on-site coastal investigations while utilizing screening methods. Aside from its advantage as an efficient method, the safety of the investigators was concerned. Therefore, this project aims to integrate the environmental investigation management with innovative technology, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), to develop an intelligent management mechanism that possesses both performance efficiency and immediacy. This project completed 70 coastal environmental aerial photography missions, orthophoto corrections, aerial-photos’ auto-stitching and trash identifications. During the missions, aerial photography and trash reporting were also carried out at coastal regions with abundant trash by following the EPA reporting mechanism. Moreover, an information platform was established to integrate the results obtained and for future information collection and data access for the EPA. Due to the experience gained from the frequent aerial photography sessions, operating procedures of aerial inspections for coastal trash clean-up and a management mechanism for normality UAV inspection were established, which can be references for future aerial investigation on coastal environmental cleanliness management.

coastal waste survey, Aerial photography, unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV), orthophotos