Individual Ortho-rectification of Coast Guard Aerial Images for Oil Spill Monitoring

Accidents in which oil spills occur intermittently in the ocean due to ship collisions and sinkings. In order to prepare prompt countermeasures when such an accident occurs, it is necessary to accurately identify the current status of spilled oil. To this end, the Coast Guard patrols the target area with a fixed-wing airplane or helicopter and checks it with the naked eye or video, but it was difficult to determine the area contaminated by the spilled oil and its exact location on the map. Accordingly, this study develops a technology for direct ortho-rectification by automatically geo-referencing aerial images collected by the Coast Guard without individual ground reference points to identify the current status of spilled oil. First, meta information required for georeferencing is extracted from a visualized screen of sensor information such as video by optical character recognition (OCR). Based on the extracted information, the external orientation parameters of the image are determined. Images are individually orthorectified using the determined the external orientation parameters. The accuracy of individual orthoimages generated through this method was evaluated to be about tens of meters up to 100 m. The accuracy level was reasonably acceptable considering the inherent errors of the position and attitude sensors, the inaccuracies in the internal orientation parameters such as camera focal length, without using no ground control points. It is judged to be an appropriate level for identifying the current status of spilled oil contaminated areas in the sea. In the future, if real-time transmission of images captured during flight becomes possible, individual orthoimages can be generated in real time through the proposed individual orthorectification technology. Based on this, it can be effectively used to quickly identify the current status of spilled oil contamination and establish countermeasures.