Activity monitoring in a commercial harbor using multitemporal repeat-pass interferometric SAR data

Since the launch of Terrasar-X, Radarsat 2 and the Cosmo-Skymed constellation, spaceborne SAR data with a high spatial resolution have become more readily available, allowing to monitor areas with a high level of human activity independent of weather circumstances. The current paper investigates the use of multi-temporal spaceborne SAR data for monitoring human activity within a commercial port. A large stack of spotlight images is available for this project, allowing a high level of temporal detail. In the current paper HiRes spotlight data from the Cosmo-Skymed constellation are used. For activity monitoring on land a method was developed that combines information from interferometric coherence and amplitude information into a semi-supervised change detection and classification scheme. The activity monitoring on water focusses on the detection of ships in the harbor. The ship detection is based on an image processing chain applied on the log-intensity data.