Application of multiresolution and multispectral polarimetric techniques for reliable vessel monitoring and control

Carrying out an effective monitoring and control of fishing activities is indispensable to guarantee a sustainable exploitation of sea resources. Nowadays, it is widely assumed that spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constitutes a valuable and effective tool for this purpose. Nevertheless, automatic interpretation of SAR images is often puzzling. Hence this paper proposes a new framework for the understanding and handling of SAR data based on the wavelet transform. Specifically, a novel algorithm for ship detection is proposed, justified and tested. On the other hand, this paper aims at bringing some insight at ship detection capabilities of light polarimetric systems.