Vessel Recognition Using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery

Depending upon the high-resolution satellite imagery of recent years, distinction of the one-meter-length object of terrestrial has become possible. Advanced usage of satellite imagery is getting popular in civil engineering field. However, in maritime transportation field, it is not utilized yet sufficiently. At East Asian region, the marine traffic density has increased attendant upon recent economic development, but the actual condition and the behavior of that traffic style is still grasped only roughly. In this research, at the area whose such traffic control system is insufficient, we aim toward the development of the observation system on maritime traffic with the satellite imagery. In order to examine the ship type identification method from the imagery, the ship images in this paper are drawn up from Multispectral data making use of the picture of the ship at Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama port using IKONOS satellite.