Near Real Time Applications for Maritime Situational Awareness

Maritime Situational Awareness is of global importance and satellite remote sensing technologies are well suited to derive maritime value added products. Processing systems to derive information about oil spill, ship or iceberg detection from spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image data are being developed and integrated at the Ground Station Neustrelitz, part of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD). Shortly, products of meteo-marine parameters like wind and wave will complement the product portfolio. Research and development aim at the implementation of highly automated services for operational use. At this time SAR images are widely used because of the possibility to provide maritime products with high spatial resolution over wide swaths and under all weather conditions. In combination with other information sources like Automatic Identification System (AIS) data fusion products are available to support the Maritime Situational Awareness