OBIA ship detection with multispectral and SAR images: A simulation for Copernicus security applications

Abstract

Every day, ships of different type, size and origin cross the world seas. Not only for commerce and transport, but also for illegal activities. In addition to conventional positioning and tracking systems, detection with Earth observation satellites is an effective means to monitor human movements across the sea. The European Copernicus Programme operates towards this goal, through the definition of border and maritime surveillance as one of its main tasks. This paper describes an Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) workflow developed for ship detection, monitoring and tracking with high-resolution satellite images. Here, it has been used to simulated medium-resolution multispectral (MS) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images representative of the Sentinel components of Copernicus. First results confirm that the method proposed can be efficiently used by European agencies for monitoring the explosive growth of illegal flows in the Mediterranean Sea.