Last season, 704 hectares of illegal greenhouses were detected in Doñana, mainly in its northern crown. Even if it represents a considerable reduction compared to the 1,023 in 2018, this figure remains very high, which is why a tool destined to be decisive is now joining this battle: artificial intelligence associated with satellite remote sensing. If previously months passed between one image and another in these growing areas, leaving less room to react to irregularities, they will now be updated every five days and the app will also automatically alert if plastics are lifted in unauthorized soils. to irrigation.
“This allows us an almost immediate capacity for action, it’s wonderful,” admits Alejandro Rodríguez, water commissioner of the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation (CHG), the state body responsible for managing the park’s water resources. national. “If you detect an irregularity on the fly, you have more possibilities to act”, because the speed with which the new images will be obtained will make it possible to detect an illegal greenhouse during its installation, and not when it is completed, it has cultures. in full development and it is already more complicated the intervention.
Designed in collaboration with the University of Seville, the tool processes satellite images with artificial intelligence algorithms to detect crops under plastic. The analysis cross-references the geolocation of the greenhouse with cadastral information and with databases that include irrigable agricultural land and irrigation concessions, both those granted, those refused and those in progress. “It’s a very powerful tool that allows us to know in a few days what previously took us months. »
With all this data, it detects irregular regularities, which is nothing other than the presence of plastic in a plot that does not have water catchment authorization. If the application makes it possible to verify the “mapping of rights” of the land, it is not sufficient in itself to initiate a sanction procedure by the water commissioner, even if it “sounds the alarm” and gives place for an inspection visit. “There may be a few false positives, but the reliability is 99%,” emphasizes Rodríguez.
A public website to report the offender
The Confederation has already used remote sensing and telemetry systems until now, but the new tool represents a qualitative leap. “It’s already like in Minority Report“, likens the water commissioner, using Steven Spielberg’s popular 2002 film as an example. The next step is to make all this data public via a website, which is seen as a “deterrent for potential violators”, because “he is going to report them” publicly.
The system is currently applied to supervise the greenhouses of the northern forest crown of Doñana, but the objective is to use it little by little throughout the Guadalquivir basin, in which almost 900,000 hectares of irrigated land are distributed, representing 25% of the total irrigated area. all those authorized in Spain. And if the first use is for plastic, the next step will be to use it in rice fields and detect irrigation ponds.
The Northern Crown has been precisely at the center of the political and social debate for two years, since it is the area in which the Andalusian PP planned to regularize (through a law in Parliament and with the blessing of the Junta of Andalusia) a significant amount of crops that illegally extract water from the Doñana aquifer. This gave rise to an agreement between the central government and the Andalusian government, Rodríguez therefore considers that the farmers “are now clear that there is no possibility of regularization” of these crops and this, with the measures which include this new tool, will reduce greenhouses. without permission.
Of course, and even if the environmental prosecutor’s office is already calling for prison sentences in cases of illegal water extraction, the road is still slow in the fight against illegal wells. “From the time the site is reported until a final decision is made to close it, at least seven years pass,” says the water commissioner.
A digital twin
And what’s next? Well, in addition to applying artificial intelligence to satellite images, there are now plans to create a digital twin of the water system using the existing network of piezometers – half of which are in Doñana. On the one hand, the water meters required by the regulations will send the data directly to the Hydrographic Confederation “with the guarantee that they have not been manipulated”, a transfer which will now be possible even in areas without coverage of the mobile telephone network.
On the other hand, the piezometric network measures water levels in the system, so the digital twin (“a mechanism that high-end cars already have, for example, to detect problems”) will notice on the fly if quantities are extracted. . above the permissions granted. This monitoring of collections will allow us to know in real time the resources extracted and consumed, which will allow us to know on the fly if more is being consumed and where.
