Ship Detection Using SAR—An Integration of Geographic Systems

This paper presents an approach for ship detection in Port Constanta using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology. The proposed methodology integrates several geographic systems, including Creodias API, Snap Desktop, and ArcGIS Pro. A plugin has been developed for ArcGIS Pro that enables the download and preprocessing of raster images, as well as detecting the ships within the port using SNAPs built in adaptive thresholding and object-discrimination methods. The integration of different geographic systems enables a more efficient and streamlined workflow for ship detection, as well as the potential for further analysis and visualization of the detected ships. The use of SAR technology also allows for detection in adverse weather conditions and at night, which can become a crucial factor for ship monitoring. The data regarding raster files is taken from the Amazon Sentinel-1 bucket which provides easy access to the Sentinel-1 satellite observation data, allowing users to quickly and efficiently process and analyze large amounts of information. In the scope of this paper, data collection is a crucial step. After the raster images have been downloaded and preprocessed, the identified targets are available within a shapefile and can then be loaded in a dedicated GIS application, such as ArcGIS Pro.