Perspectives on Oil Spill Detection using Synthetic Aperture Radar

Deliberate illegal discharges of oil at sea can be reduced by law enforcement and via improving the monitoring and controlling capabilities. During the last decades, satellite based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images have been consistently and progressively used to achieve global monitoring of the seas. Satellite based oil spill detection is nowadays an operational service in Europe (CleanSeaNet run by EMSA), placing increasingly strict requirements in terms of detection performance, i.e. false alarms and missed detections mitigation. In this work, an overview of oil spill detection from satellite based SAR is given, with particular attention to the recent advances and trends in optimising and enhancing these achievements for operational use. Confidence level, ancillary data, data fusion and SAR data quality assessment are discussed together with their impact on the final “reliability” of the oil spill monitoring application.