On Tuesday 15 September 2026, Porto Viro (Rovigo, Italy) hosted the capacity-building workshop for the stakeholders of the Po demo site of the EU-funded INSPIRE project. The CNR-ISMAR team presented the results of the work carried out on the Po di Donzella: environmental and microplastic monitoring, riverbank clean-ups, litter collection with the hybrid system installed on the river, and the new camera system on the Ponte Molo bridge, for which Infordata Sistemi designed the network, the data transfer and the AI-based image analysis.
On the same day, in the presence of Elisa Venturini, the Veneto Region’s councillor for the environment, the river litter interception facility built under INSPIRE with co-funding from the Veneto Region was inaugurated in Porto Viro. Its goal is to stop plastic and other waste before it reaches the Adriatic Sea.
The Po di Donzella demo site
INSPIRE’s Italian case study is located on the Po di Donzella (Po di Gnocca), one of the branches of the Po Delta, between the Ponte Molo bridge and the Santa Giulia pontoon bridge. Here the project partners – including CNR-ISMAR, VITO, AIT, MOLD, MINDS and Infordata Sistemi – work on three fronts: monitoring plastics and litter, collecting them, and sharing the results with local communities, schools and public bodies.
From the bridge to the portal: cameras and artificial intelligence
Twelve IP cameras mounted on the Ponte Molo bridge (SP35 provincial road) cover the entire width of the river. Infordata Sistemi designed the site’s connectivity and network: the cameras, each powered through a single Power over Ethernet cable, are connected to a network video recorder (NVR) and to a NAS that acts as a local buffer; a 4G LTE router transfers the images to the Infordata network and to the INSPIRE portal, and Infordata operators manage the system remotely.
Every 15 seconds the system captures a synchronised frame from each camera. Around 18,000 frames a day reach the portal, where they are organised by date and camera and stitched into a single collage showing the whole river cross-section.
A computer vision service based on YOLOv8 analyses every frame, detects floating objects and assigns each one a confidence score. Objects appearing in consecutive frames are linked into tracks, so the same item is not counted twice, and operators can confirm or reject each detection directly in the portal. In the first month of the campaign the system recognised more than 68,000 objects, most of them logs and woody debris carried by the current.
Images and detections remain available on the portal, searchable by day, camera and confidence level, and can be exported for further analysis: the same data are ready to feed the models of other partners, such as those of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Bridge-mounted cameras are one of the solutions INSPIRE uses to estimate, continuously, the flow of floating litter carried by rivers.
Collection: the hybrid system on the river
The hybrid system developed by partners MOLD and MINDS is operating on the Po di Donzella. It combines modular, self-powered and automatic floating barriers with a collection cage featuring AI-based litter identification. The first emptying, after 43 days, yielded 19 kg of material; the next two, each after two days, yielded 2 and 6 kg. The most frequent plastic items include rigid and flexible fragments, caps from detergents and drinks, polystyrene fragments, cotton bud sticks and clam mesh bags; in the third emptying, the microplastics retained by the cage were also counted: 56 rigid fragments and 76 pellets.
Riverbank clean-ups and environmental monitoring
Since March 2025, clean-up and monitoring campaigns have been carried out at four sites along the banks of the Po di Donzella, two upstream and two downstream of the pontoon bridge, with the litter classified according to the Joint Research Centre (JRC) list. The clean-up days organised with Plastic Free Onlus collected 1,424 kg of waste on 22 March 2025 and 11,040 kg along 2.5 km of riverbank on 21–22 February 2026.
Since August 2024, CNR-ISMAR has also been running seasonal environmental monitoring campaigns – nine so far – measuring the physico-chemical and biological parameters of the water and the presence of microplastics in water and sediments, including polymer analysis. The study of microplastics in sediments is carried out in collaboration with Aalborg University.
Working together with the local community
The workshop is one step in the stakeholder engagement process that accompanies the project. The organisations involved include the Veneto Region and its regional civil engineering office (Genio Civile), the Interregional Agency for the Po River (AIPo), the Po River District Basin Authority, the Po Delta Park Authority, the Province of Rovigo, ARPAV (the Veneto regional environmental protection agency), the municipalities of Porto Tolle and Taglio di Po, Veneto Strade, local fishermen’s cooperatives and Plastic Free Onlus.
Special thanks go to the CNR-ISMAR team, and in particular to Vanessa Moschino, Fantina Madricardo and Tihana Marčeta, who authored the presentation of the Po site results.
Infordata Sistemi’s role
Within INSPIRE, Infordata Sistemi – an Italian Benefit Corporation (Società Benefit) – is responsible for the digital platforms and data management: from the INSPIRE Impact Dashboard to the public Decision Support Tool and the image acquisition and analysis chain at Ponte Molo. It is work that brings together networks, data and artificial intelligence in support of environmental monitoring, in line with the company’s common-benefit purposes.
INSPIRE – Innovative Solutions for Plastic Free European Rivers is a Horizon Europe project under the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters”, coordinated by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). More information on the project page and at inspire-europe.org.
Funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101112879 (INSPIRE). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.