Overview

The past few decades have witnessed the intensification of worldwide offshore resource-based operations such as fishing and oil and gas exploration and production. The versatile and resource-rich ocean environment is a high-risk arena for exploitative activities, thus prompting government and industry to turn towards satellite remote sensing for a powerful monitoring solution.

SAR images from RADARSAT-1 have contributed to advancing the ability to monitor the world's oceans, particularly for operational applications such as ship detection, oil spill monitoring and wind field estimation. RADARSAT-1 is also used for ocean wave surveillance as it provides a direct measurement of the surface wave field.

The Ultra-Fine beam mode (3m resolution) on RADARSAT-2 will improve ship detection and in combination with quad-pol data offers the potential for ship classification.