Spaceborne SAR-Based Detection of Ships in Suez Gulf to Analyze the Maritime Traffic Jam Caused Due to the Blockage of Egypt’s Suez Canal

Ananya Sonkar, Shashi Kumar () and Navneet Kumar
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Ananya Sonkar: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women, Delhi 110006, India
Shashi Kumar: Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Department, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dehradun 248001, India
Navneet Kumar: Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-24

Abstract: With the convenience and connectedness of the oceans in recent years, there has been an increase in naval traffic, which has prompted maritime surveillance to attract special attention due to its significant application in marine operations. Ships, because of their uneven and rugged design, appear as a brighter patch, which aids in their identification by the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), an active remote sensing technique. In this study, Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 datasets are used to detect vessels in the Gulf of Suez in order to examine the increasing maritime traffic induced by the Suez Canal blockage caused by the Ever Given ship becoming stranded in the canal on 23 March 2021 and being freed after 6 days on 29 March 2021. The usefulness of dual-pol spaceborne SAR datasets in ship detection is also determined. The analysis was performed within a time window spanning before, during, and after the blockage event. On the basis of the experimental results, Sentinel-1 images proved to be more effective compared to Sentinel-2 images for ship detection due to the all-weather capability of the Sentinel-1 dataset. Furthermore, the ship detection results obtained in dual polarization were substantially more accurate than the results obtained in a single polarization.

Keywords: maritime surveillance; vessel detection; Synthetic Aperture Radar; remote sensing; Sentinel-1; marine traffic; Suez Canal; SUMO; Sentinel-2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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