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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-849-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Detection of Illegal Landfills on Satellite Imagery Using a Multi-agent Framework</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lytvynov</surname>
<given-names>Yehor</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hnatushenko</surname>
<given-names>Viktoriia</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hnatushenko</surname>
<given-names>Volodymyr</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3140-3788</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Heipke</surname>
<given-names>Christian</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7007-9549</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Dept. Information Technologies and Systems, Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies, Dnipro, Ukraine</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Dept. Information Technologies and Computer Engineering, Dnipro University of Technology, Dnipro, Ukraine</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Photogrammetry and GeoInformation, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>08</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-3-2026</volume>
<fpage>849</fpage>
<lpage>856</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Yehor Lytvynov et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/849/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-849-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/849/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-849-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/849/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-849-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/849/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-849-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Illegal waste disposal sites pose significant ecological and public-health risks yet remain difficult to track with traditional field inspections. We propose a multi-agent detection framework that fuses textural, spectral, and contextual cues from medium-resolution satellite imagery for this work. Three specialized agents - Waste-Pile, Road, and Industry detectors - are implemented as YOLO (You Only Look Once) convolutional models that generate partial hypotheses, which are then hierarchically aggregated through rule weights learned from expert-labelled samples. The system provides an interpretable set of object relations, allowing regulators to trace how individual cues contribute to the final decision. The method was validated on an independent test area near Taromske (Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine) and corroborated by ground surveys. Joint aggregation raised the posterior probability of the primary target cluster from 0.27 (single-detector confidence) to 0.91, while maintaining robustness to label noise and heterogeneous sensor characteristics. Compared with conventional CNN baselines, the proposed approach delivers three key advantages: explicit explainability of outputs, transferability to 10 m spatial resolution without extensive retraining, and seamless integration of heterogeneous evidence sources. The proposed framework can serve as a cost-effective backbone for regional and national waste-monitoring systems. Future work will focus on near-real-time processing of Sentinel-2 time series, incorporation of hyperspectral and thermal methane indicators to assess remediation stages, and extension of the array of features to other anthropogenic disturbances such as open-pit mining and construction debris.</p>
</abstract>
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