  The detection and characterization of illegal solid waste disposal sites are
essential for environmental protection, particularly for mitigating pollution
and health hazards. Improperly managed landfills contaminate soil and
groundwater via rainwater infiltration, posing threats to both animals and
humans. Traditional landfill identification approaches, such as on-site
inspections, are time-consuming and expensive. Remote sensing is a
cost-effective solution for the identification and monitoring of solid waste
disposal sites that enables broad coverage and repeated acquisitions over time.
Earth Observation (EO) satellites, equipped with an array of sensors and
imaging capabilities, have been providing high-resolution data for several
decades. Researchers proposed specialized techniques that leverage remote
sensing imagery to perform a range of tasks such as waste site detection,
dumping site monitoring, and assessment of suitable locations for new
landfills. This review aims to provide a detailed illustration of the most
relevant proposals for the detection and monitoring of solid waste sites by
describing and comparing the approaches, the implemented techniques, and the
employed data. Furthermore, since the data sources are of the utmost importance
for developing an effective solid waste detection model, a comprehensive
overview of the satellites and publicly available data sets is presented.
Finally, this paper identifies the open issues in the state-of-the-art and
discusses the relevant research directions for reducing the costs and improving
the effectiveness of novel solid waste detection methods.
