Monitoring of coastal wind and oil spill using KOMPSAT-5

KOMPSAT-5 (X-band SAR system), which will be launched soon, has a good technical functionality for emergent oil spill monitoring. The X-band damping ratio is greater than that of any other frequencies, which increases the probability of detecting oil spills from SAR data. However, the detection of oil spills depends significantly on the wind condition and the presence of look-alikes. A new dark spot detection algorithm was developed in this study. The algorithm determines the optimal threshold value for each sub-window base on local wind. For better local wind estimation, an X-band wind retrieval model is being developed. Oil spill detection algorithm for KOMPSAT-5 estimates wind information directly from SAR data, and is expected to enhance the detection capability.