How to map oil spills from Space?

The health and sustainability of the oceanic and marine environments are attached to the anthropogenic activities. One major example is in the oil and gas domain, and more specifically in the ship and tanker routing. Oil pollution in these environments can be caused not only by ship accidents, but also by illegal discharges from ships or offshore platforms, natural leaks or pipeline accidents. And all of these are causing both short and long term effects to the health and sustainability of seas and oceans. And some of them may not be reversible..

What role does Earth Observation have in these kind of phenomena?

The first step is the detection of an oil spill. The definition of the water area boundaries where the oil spill is located and its size are two of the most crucial aspects that have to be estimated. Secondly, the identification of the type of oil spill and its thickness can play a significant role to further examination: its possible source and what actions should be made for its removal.

Moreover, EO and GIS can help in the monitoring of the direction, speed, shift and spreading of an oil spill, when EO data with high temporal resolution are available.

All of the above are still a big challenge in the scientific community. One way that can be achieved is by using hyperspectral technology.

For those who are interested in oil spill mapping, GEO University has an ideal course:

Hyperspectral Imaging Application: Oil Spill Mapping

This textbook course will guide you to learn how to use hyperspectral and multispectral remote sensing images to:

1. Map the extent of an oil spill event
2. Identify the type of oil spilled
3. Estimate the thickness of the oil spill in order to measure spilled oil volume

To accomplish these, two methodologies are presented based on satellite earth observation images. Also experiments using ground spectral measurements are used in order to build a Spectral Library and develop a model for thickness estimation.

This textbook course is ideal for students and professionals either in the Earth Observation & GIS domain or in the Environmental Monitoring domain.

The power of Spectral Unmixing in oil spill mapping!

While Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) are used operationally to map oil spills, optical remote sensing and especially hyperspectral remote sensing can not only map, but also identify the oil spill type and estimate the spill thickness over its entire extent!

What will you learn?

• Hyperspectral oil spill mapping
• Relative Radiometric Normalization
• Oil spill type identification with hyperspectral data
• Spectral Unmixing
• Oil spill thickness estimation
• Spectral Libraries building and updating

So, if you want to learn how to use Earth Observation for the preservation of the marine ecosystem from such threats.. enroll now and advance your skills!

Furthermore, if interested in the hyperspectral imaging domain, the hyperspectral learning path in GEO University is for you! There, you can find all related courses concerning hyperspectral methodologies and applications currently provided in GEO University. And more and more courses will be added in the future. Don’t forget to take advantage of the summer sales coupon for all bundles! Take a 20% discount with the code: summer20

Need more information?

E-mail here: info@geo.university