Abstract—Coastal water quality monitoring is crucial for environmental sustainability and public health. This work introduces a very cutting-edge methodology, using ΦSat-2 multispectral data and quanvolutional neural networks to explore quantum-enhanced machine learning for water contaminant assessment. By integrating quantum preprocessing into a classical regression model, it is possible to achieve a significant reduction in model parameters while maintaining high predictive accuracy. Additionally, this work introduces an innovative dataset that integrates simulated ΦSat-2 spectral data with Copernicus Marine Service bio-geochemical products, ensuring a strong alignment between satellite observations and reference turbidity measurements. Our results show that quantum models use up to 98% fewer parameters than their classical counterparts, while achieving a 6.9% improvement in the Pearson correlation coefficient between the ΦSat-2 pre-processed bands and the ground-truth turbidity values, compared to the case without quantum pre-processing. Additionally, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) improves by 7.3% over the classical baseline. These findings highlight the potential of quantum-assisted remote sensing to enable more efficient and scalable analysis of large-scale water contaminant data, paving the way for advanced big data approaches in water quality monitoring.
Quantum-Enhanced Water Quality Monitoring: Exploiting Φ Sat-2 Data With Quanvolution
Abstract—Coastal water quality monitoring is crucial for environmental sustainability and public health. This work introduces a very cutting-edge methodology, using ΦSat-2 multispectral data and quanvolutional neural networks to explore quantum-enhanced machine learning for water contaminant assessment. By integrating quantum preprocessing into a classical regression model, it is possible to achieve a significant reduction in model parameters while maintaining high predictive accuracy. Additionally, this work introduces an innovative dataset that integrates simulated ΦSat-2 spectral data with Copernicus Marine Service bio-geochemical products, ensuring a strong alignment between satellite observations and reference turbidity measurements. Our results show that quantum models use up to 98% fewer parameters than their classical counterparts, while achieving a 6.9% improvement in the Pearson correlation coefficient between the ΦSat-2 pre-processed bands and the ground-truth turbidity values, compared to the case without quantum pre-processing. Additionally, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) improves by 7.3% over the classical baseline. These findings highlight the potential of quantum-assisted remote sensing to enable more efficient and scalable analysis of large-scale water contaminant data, paving the way for advanced big data approaches in water quality monitoring.
A significant amount of remotely sensed data is generated daily by many Earth observation (EO) spaceborne and airborne sensors over different countries of our planet. Different applications use those data, such as natural hazard monitoring, global climate change, urban planning, and more. Many challenges are brought by the use of these big data in the context of remote sensing (RS) applications. In recent years, the employment of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL)-based algorithms has allowed a more efficient use of these data, but the issues in managing, processing, and efficiently exploiting them have even increased as classical computers have reached their limits. This article highlights a significant shift toward leveraging quantum computing (QC) techniques in processing large volumes of RS data. The proposed Quanv4EO framework introduces a quanvolution method for (pre)processing multidimensional EO data. Its effectiveness was first demonstrated on standard image classification datasets (MNIST and FashionMNIST), achieving accuracies of 99.84% and 96.81%, respectively, with a significantly reduced model size of 42 k parameters and 16 frozen qubits. Its capabilities were then checked on EO datasets, such as EuroSAT, with a mean accuracy of 96% using balanced iterative reducing and clustering using hierarchies (BIRCHs) clustering and 93% using automated DL (AutoDL), surpassing or matching state-of-the-art (SOTA) classical nonquantum models. Applying the framework to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, the QSPeckleFilter demonstrates notable improvements in speckle noise reduction, achieving a peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 21.72 and a structural similarity index measure (SSIM) of 0.81, surpassing all tested classical counterparts. The proposed results underscore the potential of quantum-enhanced approaches in RS data analysis, paving the way for more efficient and effective solutions for wide geographical area EO data exploitation.
The growing complexity of Earth observation data demands innovative approaches for efficient processing and analysis. Quantum convolutional neural networks integrate quantum computing principles into classical deep learning architectures, offering enhanced feature extraction capabilities. Building on the Quanv4EO framework, this study introduces a trainable quanvolutional layer within a hybrid neural network, enabling dynamic parameter optimization during training. Experiments using the EuroSAT dataset demonstrate that the trainable quanvolution surpasses both its non-trainable quantum and the classical counterparts, achieving a higher accuracy value with fewer parameters. These findings underscore the potential of trainable quantum models for earth observation applications.
On the integration of artificial intelligence with quantum sensing technologies for environmental monitoring, these make it much more precise, efficient and real time information end-user.In order to combat climate change markers, insulation effectiveness, and environmental hazard immediate response systems, this research dictates an AI based quantum sensing framework.Quantum augmented machine learning methods, i.e., Quantum Bayesian Networks and Quanvolutional Neural Networks, are used to improve accuracy of measurements from sensors and furthermore sensor calibration.In addition, the proposed system incorporates Q-SCALE for advanced sensor calibration to eliminate noise and improve sensor performance.The Quantum Wireless Sensing framework, in the form of quantum-based sensors, has an advantage in sensing dynamic environmental factors with an increased sensitivity.Some key findings include that AI quantum AI sensors are better than traditional sensors at alerting to abrupt environmental shifts, monitoring pollutants, testing greenhouse conditions, etc.Quantum entanglement was not used, and quantum sensors also achieved secure data transmission of distances beyond 50 kilometers.The proposed system achieves real-time data acquisition using lightweight models optimized for such resource constrained environments and reduces both the energy consumption.This major step in research will lead towards development of more accurate as well as scalable, sustainable environmental monitoring solutions with enhanced data security.As such, recent innovations such as AI coupled with nanomaterials and IoT-instigated quantum surveillance systems indicate the extent of this field's capability.
Air pollution forecasting is a critical challenge in environmental science. Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) are two of the most harmful gases, contributing significantly to respiratory illnesses and environmental degradation. Accurate predictions of NO2and CO levels help mitigate the adverse effects of pollutants on public health. A hybrid quantum-classical machine learning model is developed, integrating a feature map, variational ansatz, and quantum regressor optimized with multiple optimizers. The results are compared with classical machine learning model, such as Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), demonstrating the potential of quantum computing in predictive modeling. Experimental results using the air quality dataset reveal that the proposed model achieves superior performance compared to traditional approaches, as measured by MSE, RMSE, MAE, and R2. The findings suggest that quantum-enhanced neural networks provide a promising avenue for real-time air pollution forecasting, enabling proactive pollution control measures.
In a world burdened by air pollution, the integration of state-of-the-art sensor calibration techniques utilizing Quantum Computing (QC) and Machine Learning (ML) holds promise for enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of air quality monitoring systems in smart cities. This article investigates the process of calibrating inexpensive optical fine-dust sensors through advanced methodologies such as Deep Learning (DL) and Quantum Machine Learning (QML). The objective of the project is to compare four sophisticated algorithms from both the classical and quantum realms to discern their disparities and explore possible alternative approaches to improve the precision and dependability of particulate matter measurements in urban air quality surveillance. Classical Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models are evaluated against their quantum counterparts: Variational Quantum Regressors (VQR) and Quantum LSTM (QLSTM) circuits. Through meticulous testing, including hyperparameter optimization and cross-validation, the study assesses the potential of quantum models to refine calibration performance. Our analysis shows that: the FFNN model achieved superior calibration accuracy on the test set compared to the VQR model in terms of lower L1 loss function (2.92 vs 4.81); the QLSTM slightly outperformed the LSTM model (loss on the test set: 2.70 vs 2.77), despite using fewer trainable weights (66 vs 482).
Despite the growing impact of emissions on our health and the environment, there remains an unmet need for emission concentration prediction and forecasting. The accumulating monitoring station and satellite data make the problem well-suited for quantum machine learning. This work takes a quantum machine learning approach to the spatiotemporal prediction of emission concentration. A quantum quanvolutional neural network model was developed and compared to a classical spatiotemporal ConvLSTM model using an evaluation framework of baseline models and metrics of per-pixel loss and intersection over union accuracy. The quantum quanvolutional neural network developed successfully generates one-hour-ahead emission concentration forecasts with increasingly lower loss (6.5% and 30.5% less) and higher accuracy (18.4% and 18.6% higher) compared to the input-independent and random baselines at the end of training. The quantum model was also comparable to the classical ConvLSTM model, with slightly lower loss (4%) but also slightly lower accuracy (3.7%). The study’s results suggest that the quantum machine learning approach has the potential to improve emission concentration modeling and could become a powerful tool for accurately predicting air pollution.