Within the framework of the PROBLUE program funded by the World Bank, the Institute of Water Resources Planning in collaboration with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (Germany) and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Austria) are implementing the project "Plastic monitoring in Vietnam" during 2020 - 2021.

The project is intended to determine plastic waste quantities, types, key locations and pathways of leaked plastic waste; identify top 10 priority plastic items that should be subject to policy making and increased understanding of plastics pollution in the country.

With the development of science and technology, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with high resolution and multispectral video recording equipment have been widely applied in the project, at the same time integrating artificial intelligence applications to receive plastic detection and quantification. 

Figure 1. APLASTIC-Q system for assessment of waste quantities and pollution types (Wolf et al. 2020)

PROBLUE is a new Multi-Donor Trust Fund, housed at the World Bank, that supports the development of integrated, sustainable and healthy marine and coastal resources. With the Blue Economy Action Plan as its foundation, PROBLUE contributes to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14)  and is fully aligned with the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing the income and welfare of the poor in a sustainable way.

Figure 2. The Plastic Litter Detector evaluates the drone image of a polluted river

In response to a request from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), the World Bank Group has mobilized resources from PROBLUE, a multi-donor Trust Fund, to support Vietnam in its efforts of addressing plastic waste pollution. The objective of the Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) is to support Vietnam to address plastic waste issues, including ocean plastics, through enhanced knowledge on plastic pollution and value chains and the identification of policies and public and private investments. The ASA program is currently scheduled to last through the end of June 2021. The ASA program is organized under three components: (1) Supporting diagnostics on plastic waste; (2) Identifying priority solid waste management and plastics policies and investments; and (3) Value chain diagnostics for plastics in Vietnam and recommendation for private sector action plan.

The activities proposed under this ASA aim at the reduction of mismanaged plastic waste and developing plastic policies to reduce, reuse and recycle the priority types of plastics in Vietnam, and thus contribute to the achievement of integrated and sustainable economic development in healthy oceans.

A surveying site