Non-Reporting Ship Traffic in the Western Indian Ocean

AIS ship position reporting data from up to 17 satellites and several coastal locations covering the Western Indian Ocean were collected during a period of one year, that ended 15 Sep 2015. In addition, 1,361 satellite SAR images that were acquired over the region in the same timeframe, were analysed for ship detection. The major part of these were Sentinel-1 images that were analysed fully automatically, yielding 11,510 ship detections that were deemed reliable. Correlating these detections with the reporting ship traffic indicates that, overall, fully one-third of the ships detected with satellite SAR are not reporting on AIS. Some of the analysed SAR data was subjected to manual verification. This concerned data from TerraSAR-X, RADARSAT-2, COSMO-SkyMed, and ALOS-2-PALSAR of various image modes, plus some of the Sentinel-1 images. This confirmed the quoted average for the fraction of non-reporting ships. However, within the overall average there are large geographical variations, besides variations with image resolution.

VAN WIMERSMA GREIDANUS Herman;  SANTAMARIA SERNA Carlos;  ALVAREZ ALVAREZ Marlene;  KRAUSE Detmar;  STASOLLA Mattia;  VACHON Paris; 

2016-09-16

European Space Agency

JRC97962

978-92-9221-305-3,   

1609-042X,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97962,