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The Project 'Plastic waste and the Black Sea, monitoring litter at sea and on the land from Sentinel-2 data' was funded by the Discovery element of ESA's Basic Activities, and it had the following objectives:

• To facilitate systematic marine debris detection by Earth observation for tracking them before they beach, if ever, by improving a detection algorithm already sketched and tested, and develop a true detector from it
• To test various methodologies for the detection and identification of terrestrial illegal dumping sites

In recent years the need for accessing historical Earth Observation data information has greatly increased, driven by long term scientific and environmental monitoring. The need to preserve such data indefinitely has led to the establishment of the Long-Term Data Preservation (LTDP) guidelines for Earth Observation. However to make full use of this data, it is necessary to have sufficient quality information available to be assured about the data quality.

ESA has a leading role in establishing and maintaining quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) strategies in all phases of its Earth Observation (EO) missions. Expressed in the Mission Requirement Documents (MRDs) and in the Phase E Management Plan, these strategies ensure that instrument performance and generated products are monitored and that the scientific and operational mission requirements are met or even exceeded.