Near Real Time Suspect Vessel Identification

System

23th January 2008

Sónia PelizzariAntónio Rocha, Paulo Carmo, Ricardo Pereira,

AcknowledgmentsThe Portuguese Navy: for using and testing the system and for providing the resources needed for validation

The European Space Agency: for all the support, in special for sample images at early stages of the development of the SVI System and for the acceptance of a CAT-1 proposal for NRT image delivery over the Portuguese coast

The Joint Research Center: for have given access to ENVISAT and RADARSAT-1 data from the DECLIMS EC-funded FP5 project.

Port of Lisbon: for providing AIS/VTSPortuguese Fishery Inspection Agency: for providing VMS

Contents

• Global Vision of the Suspect Vessel Identification (SVI) System

• Main SVI System components– The SVI Detector and Classifier – The SVI Correlator

• The SVI Operational Service– The Data Set– Main Results– Detection and Classification Validation

• Conclusions and Future Work

Global Vision of the SVI System

The service chain of the SVI system is composed by 4 major blocks

5

SVI Data Ingestion

RADARSAT

ALOS

ERS-2 ENVISAT

COSMO-Skymed

TerraSAR-X SVI System

AIS VTS VMS LRIT SatAIS

Satellite Data is received in NRT per ftp from ESA Maspalomas and DLR Neustrelitz stations

SVI Data Extraction

Prescreening Discrimination

The data extraction step consists of several stages, in line with currently available state-of-the-art VDC algorithms

SVI Value Addition

The SVI Correlator will be in charge of integrating the EO and non-EO data and placing the applicable information in a structured way in the SVI database.

SVI Dissemination

A supporting GIS enabled SVI web portalhttp://space.edisoft.pt/MARISS/

Downloadable kmz and text files

Phone, Fax, Email

SVI Detector and Classifier: the Detection

The detector is able to run fully automatically or under the supervision of a SAR specialist, in manual mode.

SVI Detector and Classifier: the Detection

decreasing false alarm rates

a template matching procedure designed to match the appearance of ships in SAR imagery

calculate mean μ and standard deviation σ and set T1 T2 and T3 heuristically:T1 = μ + 3*σ T2 = μ + 1.9*σ T1 = μ + 1.4*σ

a pixel is a detection if: > T1 and > T2 and > T3

Based on the methodology applied in the SUMO software

SVI Detector and Classifier: the Classification

EllipseFit

velocity: 7.5 ms-1

target dir: 347.5ºlength: 147 mwidth: 42.5 m

Size and heading estimation

SVI Correlator

• interpolates the non-EO information available in the database to the date/time of the satellite acquisition.

• automatically find matches between the vessels identified in a SAR image and the available non-EO information.

• match is performed within a set of criteria that can be configured

SVI Correlator

After matching, vessels are assigned different correlation types:

• non-suspect vessels (also called positives): vessels detected by SAR that have been matched to AIS, VTS or VMS;• suspect vessels: vessels detected by SAR that have not been matched to AIS, VTS or VMS;• false positives: vessels detected by SAR, that were in the range of an active VTS system but which are not matched in the VTS data.• false negatives: all vessels which were not detected by SAR but which were detected by AIS, VTS or VMS.

AIS and VMS data are considered to be cooperative sourcesVTS is considered non-cooperative

The SVI Operational Service

• AIS provided by Lisbon port (blue)• VMS data provided by the Portuguese Fishery Inspectorate (red)

The SVI system has been in use for six months, over the Portuguese coast, as part of the MARISS project operational service (July- December 2007).

The Data Set:

• 132 SAR images ordered,• 104 received and processed• 30.7% with AIS, 3.8% with VMS

Coverage from 29th Aug. to 21st of Sept. 2007

The SVI Operational Service

02111:17:2621 Sep

563411:17:265 Sep11181411:20:175 Sep241611:20:015 Sep221022:55:5829 Aug

562622:55:4329 Aug

Hour (UTC)Date

# Positive detections

# Vessels w/ AIS

# SAR detections

Acquisition

• results obtained for the period of 29th of August to 21st

September, 2007

Results:

The SVI Operational ServiceResults:

The SVI Operational Service

Detection Validation: using AIS

In late December 2007, a super-tanker, named New Vision with a length of 334 meters, had some technical problems caused by a storm in North Sea while he was carrying 300000 tons of oil between Norway and Canada. During more than two weeks it was lying off the coast of Portugal, near Sines.

Detection Validation: using in-situ data

On 7th of August 2007, Pereira D’Eça corvette was placed inside the covered area at the acquisition time by the Portuguese Navy.This corvette has a length of 85 meters and a maximum speed of 22 knots. The corvette has been detected by the SVI system.

Classification Validation: using AIS

ERS-2 image from 28/12/2007 acquired at 22:53:39 in front of Lisbon

42.5 mC+D= 46 m

width

147.4 mA+B = 280 m

length

347.5º344ºtarget direction

7.54 ms-16.38 ms-1

(12.4 knots)velocity38.14º

-9.67º

60.4 m-width

170.5 m-length

350.51º347.5ºtarget direction

13.58 ms-110.96 ms-1

(21.3 knots)velocity38º

-9.67º

ClassificationAISParametersVesselCoords.

Classification Validation: using AIS

Conclusions• EDISOFT has developed a pre-operational NRT system for providing value added vessel detection and classification products through a GIS enabled web portal;

• the service has been provided in NRT in 2007 to the Portuguese users in the scope of the GMES MARISS project;

• integration has been performed with AIS and VMS, with promising results;

• first validation activities for detection and classification methods have been undertaken;

• ERS-2 has proven to be a valuable data source for vessel detection in spite of its incidence angle and polarisation features that are not optimal for this task.

• Undertake more validation campaigns (with other types of imagery, with VMS polling and with more in-situ data) focusing in ENVISAT and RADARSAT data;

• Enhance the correlation algorithm;• Test new classification methodologies, more suitable to maritime traffic in

Portuguese coast;• Extend the system to other imagery sources like RADARSAT (finalising),

ALOS, TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SKYMED;• Consider the possibility of having a more close integration with the Navy

own systems – e.g.: the ship as info provider;• Installation of NRT X-band reception capability in the Santa Maria ground

station for ENVISAT and RADARSAT (ongoing);• Incorporate meteorological data into the algorithms (ongoing

conversations with the Portuguese Meteorological Institute).

Future Work

Thank you for your attention

EDISOFT company contacts:

Address: Rua Quinta dos Medronheiros - Lazarim,

Apartado 382 - Monte Caparica

2826-801 Caparica, Portugal

Web site: http://www.edisoft.pt

e-mail: edisoft@edisoft.pt

Phone number: + 351 212 945 900