An Investigation on the Detection of Oil-based Pollutant Spills in Ice-infested Arctic Waters Utilizing Active Microwave Remote Sensing

Climate change continues to shrink the sea ice in the Arctic. Consequently, there is an ever-increasing trend of industrial and shipping activities in the Canadian Arctic. This results into a high risk of accidental or deliberate release of oil-related pollutants in the Arctic waters. Satellite remote sensing is a key component in spill detection as an essential step towards any remediation and cleanup effort. Thus, this project proposes to develop a detection algorithm based on microwave satellite data that can be incorporated into a high-level oil spill alarm system. An array of single-, dual-, and available quad-polarimetric parameters will be incorporated in the algorithm in addition to the optical and local prior information to achieve detection. Furthermore, the integrability of the data collected at different frequencies will be investigated. TO BE CONT”D

Faculty Supervisor:

David Barber

Student:

Nariman Firoozy

Partner:

C-CORE

Discipline:

Visual arts

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

Program: