CFEAS22-101 Contract for the provision of pilot surveys using Remote Piloted Aircraft (RPA) of beach locations in Belize

The Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) was announced in 2021 as a key bilateral aid programme under the Blue Planet Fund. The UK is working in partnership with Belize and at least five other countries to deliver marine science technical assistance across the 3 core themes of marine pollution, biodiversity loss and supporting sustainable seafood.

A flagship of the OCPP science and innovation is the cross-country Artificial Intelligence (AI) Environmental Monitoring work package. This work package supports partner countries with developing automated data collection, analysis and reporting on marine pollution to reduce costs and increase efficiencies of increased demands to monitor the marine environment. Cefas is leading the development of an innovative end-to-end machine learning solution to automate the process of monitoring, analysing and reporting marine litter. The tool will support streamlining of decision making for action and policy decision through bespoke automated reporting. Cefas will partner with host nations to co-develop and apply the tool in the host nation. At the core of the project is knowledge and expertise transfer to develop capacity for the long-term sustainable application of tools and methods.

To support the outputs, Cefas wishes to work with experienced stakeholders and organisations in Belize and are looking for an organisation with extensive knowledge and experience in gathering high resolution Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA - hence forward referred to as a "drone(s)") imagery of coastal and beach environments in Belize at a quality that will be sufficient to clearly identify a cigarette butt in raw imagery.