—— 
igation will 
R-B. Int. J. 
r Data 
579-1581. 
APRS, Vol. 
requency 
Mapping, 
‘RS-1 
RS, Vol.28, 
edings of 
Juerg Lichtenegger 
  
A NEAR-REAL TIME OIL SLICK MONITORING DEMONSTRATOR FOR THE MEDITERRANFAN 
Juerg LICHTENEGGER, Gianna CALABRESI, ESA/ESRIN, Frascati Italy 
Andrea PETROCCHI, Vitrociset, Rome, Italy 
Working Group IV/2 
KEY WORDS: ERS, Radar, Image Processing, Hazard, Real-time 
ABSTRACT 
A demonstration service has been set up which provides near-real time information on oil slicks in support 
of national coast guards surveillance. From a 2-year continuous monitoring of busy ship route locations in 
the Mediterranean, it has been found that every fifth ERS-SAR image contains at least one man-made slick 
of several kilometers length. At night, the percentage of images showing slicks, increases to about 22%. 
Due to the many features visible on SAR images from sea areas the correct attribution of dark patches to 
oil slicks is not easy and needs considerable experience. Useful assistance is provided by semi-automatic 
image processing tools, those, based on neural network techniques, assess the probability of an operator- 
proposed object to be an oil slick. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
Coastal and sea surface monitoring at large scale is performed generally by air. However, as a complement 
to airborne surveys, spaceborne imaging radar has already been proofed to be cost-effective for providing 
a much-enlarged coverage in time and space. 
Such combined surveillance is successfully applied in northern European waters and more recently has 
also been tested in the Mediterranean basin, mainly along the coasts of Italy, France, Spain and Greece. In 
this region only a few countries, aside of institutional anti-pollution preparedness, have implemented a 
monitoring system. This is due to primarily not affordable costs but also due to other priorities. 
With the willingness to pursue rigorous enforcement of international and national laws and regulations as 
a deterrent towards polluters, frequent sea area surveillance can be achieved using such an integrated 
airborne-spaceborne surveillance system. This approach could well be also the basis of a collection of 
statistic information on the status of pollution in relevant areas of special interest (touristic sites, protected 
areas, etc.). 
With regard to the Mediterranean it also has to be considered a closed sea area with reduced exchange of 
water and therefore highly vulnerable. For this reason International law do not tolerated any pollution, 
neither as river discharge nor from ships, while elsewhere in open ocean waters ship waste disposal is 
regulated. Our preliminary experience as well other works confirm that the Mediterranean is pollution-wise 
probably one of the worst treated area in the world, and in places comparable to the heavily polluted 
waters of the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and certain areas in Southeast Asia (Gadimova 2000). In all those 
areas international solidarity needs urgently to be developed, and as first concerted action at least a 
satellite monitoring service to be install. It can be expected that only based on reality, i.e. by demonstrating 
the horrendous level of daily pollution through a data base of mapped oil slicks, a political awareness can 
be developed. 
The presented paper aims to give an overview of the experiences made in setting up an oil spill monitoring 
demonstrator for the Mediterranean. It also reports on contacts with coast guards and on the difficulty to 
communicate with operational entities. It finally reports on the results achieved by a cautious acceptance 
of satellite technology. It has to be stated already at this point that today the aim of running an integrated 
service is still not reached, but the achievements so-far are encouraging to continue the work. 
  
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part Bl. Amsterdam 2000. 193