Abstract
Nowadays, there is a growing interest in applications of space remote sensing systems for maritime surveillance which includes among others traffic surveillance, maritime security, illegal fisheries survey, oil discharge and sea pollution monitoring. Within the framework of several French and European projects, an algorithm for automatic ship detection from SPOT–5 HRG data was developed to complement existing fishery control measures, in particular the Vessel Monitoring System. The algorithm focused on feature–based analysis of satellite imagery. Genetic algorithms and Neural Networks were used to deal with the feature–borne information. Based on the described approach, a first prototype was designed to classify small targets such as shrimp boats and tested on panchromatic SPOT–5, 5–m resolution product taking into account the environmental and fishing context. The ability to detect shrimp boats with satisfactory detection rates is an indicator of the robustness of the algorithm. Still, the benchmark revealed problems related to increased false alarm rates on particular types of images with a high percentage of cloud cover and a sea cluttered background.
Highlights
Ship detection is a key requirement for monitoring traffic, fisheries and for associating ships with oil discharges
The images were provided by the Direct Receiving Station (DRS) of SPOT-5 satellite, operating under the SEAS-Guyane (Survey of Environment of the Amazonia Assisted by Satellites) program
- the viability of utilizing neural networks evolved by Genetic algorithms (GAs) in classifying shrimp boats
Summary
Ship detection is a key requirement for monitoring traffic, fisheries and for associating ships with oil discharges. Many ships are not equipped with these systems, for example smaller fishery vessels and passenger boats do not have to apply with the existing directives (e.g. EC directive 2002/59/EC). Remote sensing is regarded as a technology to support the active system with passive measurements for noncooperating ships, sensing of non-harbour regions and monitoring purposes [1]. Space-based imaging for ship detection and maritime traffic surveillance has often formed part of major research efforts in the fields of automatic target detection and recognition. Ship detection with satellite based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) was first demonstrated by the experimental SEASAT in 1978. With later first-generation satellites such as ERS-1, JERS-1, ERS-2 the field has reached some maturity [2]
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