Operational Satellite Monitoring and Detection for Oil Spil in Offshore of United Arab Emirates

Many satellite-borne image data have been acquired in the Arabian Gulf since the mid 80’s by different space agencies and have demonstrated oil spill related features at sea. Severe oil spills were caused occasionally by accidental or deliberate oil sludge dumping from passing ships. Serious damage to fishery, water desalination plants and natural habitats are concerned. The work done is the first step towards oil spill monitoring of the offshore UAE and its adjacent waters. The interim results of this study demonstrate and confirm that the offshore UAE faces frequent occurrences of oil spills both in the Arabian Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman. Offshore Fujairah shows considerable spill concentration in multi-temporal image analysis. Ballast water containing residual oil is discharged from oil tankers there and is identified as the source of those spills. Discriminating oil spills is an important step for planning intense monitoring scheme based on space-borne imagery, which is attainable with the current acquisition conditions. As examined on a number of images which were observed by synthetic aperture radar and optical sensor including thermal infrared band between mid 70’s and early 2002, continuous data acquisition and rapid analysis are the important factors for the implementation of Oil spill monitoring system. The forthcoming ESA’s ENVISAT and near future Japanese ALOS and Canadian RADARSAT-II in conjunction with other internationally available earth observation satellites will play significant roles in continuous oil spill monitoring.