• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.2_2
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• pp.327-338
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• 2018

The possibility of ship detection monitoring at operational level using KOMPSAT-5 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Automatic Identification System (AIS) data is investigated. For the analysis, the KOMPSAT-5 SLC images, which are collected from the west coast of Shinjin port and the northern coast of Jeju port are used along with portable AIS data from near the coast. The ship detection algorithm based on HVAS (Human Visual Attention System) was applied, which has significant advantages in terms of detection speed and accuracy compared to the commonly used CFAR (Constant False Alarm Rate). As a result of the integrated analysis, the ship detection from KOMPSAT-5 and AIS were generally consistent except for small vessels. Some ships detected in KOMPSAT-5 but not in AIS are due to the data absence from AIS, while it is clearly visible in KOMPSAT-5. Meanwhile, SAR imagery also has some false alarms due to ship wakes, ghost effect, and DEM error (or satellite orbit error) during object masking in land. Improving the developed ship detection algorithm and collecting reliable AIS data will contribute for building wide integrated surveillance system of marine territory at operational level.