Diagnosis of oil spills in Shanghai waters using HJ-1 imagery

With the rapid development of shipping and oil industry chain of Shanghai Port, the risk of marine oil spills has increased. In this paper, the information of the two major oil spill accidents, which occurred near Wusong and Jiuduansha of Shanghai waters in 2012, were analyzed by using the HJ-1 domestic environment satellite, at the same time, validated by the multi-satellite data, such as medium resolution MODIS of ESA and Landsat-5 date, as well as the investigation of our project group at the scene of accident. At first, by applying ratio operation between oil-water sensitive channel bands, the difference between film and background water´s spectral reflectance was emphasized. After that, threshold determination method based on image segmentation was used, combined with the spectrum characteristic of heavy diesel oil, the oil spills information was effectively extracted from the suspected oil films area. Putting together, the oil spills location, area and quantity were diagnosed to provide the fundamental analysis data for emergency response work.