Detection and classification of man-made offshore objects in TerraSAR-X and RapidEye imagery: Selected results of the DeMarine-DEKO project

The project DEKO (Detection of artificial objects in sea areas) is integrated in the German DeMarine-Security project and focuses on the detection and classification of ships and offshore artificial objects relying on TerraSAR-X as well as on RapidEye multispectral optical images. The objectives are 1/ the development of reliable detection algorithms and 2/ the definition of effective, customized service concepts. In addition to an earlier publication, we describe in the following paper some selected results of our work. The algorithms for TerraSAR-X have been extended to a processing chain including all needed steps for ship detection and ship signature analysis, with an emphasis on object segmentation. For Rapid Eye imagery, a ship detection algorithm has been developed. Finally, some applications are described: Ship monitoring in the Strait of Dover based on TerraSAR-X StripMap using AIS information for verification, analyzing TerraSAR-X HighResolution scenes of an industrial harbor and finally an example of surveying a wind farm using change detection.