• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.38 no.6_4
• /
• pp.1955-1969
• /
• 2022

Most of the public and private users who use national satellite information such as the KOMPSAT series mainly use Electro-Optical and Infrared (EO/IR) satellite images, and the utilization of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is relatively insufficient. As KOMPSAT-5 currently in operation, KOMPSAT-6 and micro SAR satellite constellation systems are scheduled to be launched in the future, the demand for utilization of SAR satellite information is increasing in various fields. Accordingly, it is necessary to possess core technology for SAR utilization that can support the utilization of SAR satellite information for users. Due to the all-weather properties of SAR system, change detection technology is a key application technology. However, until now, the development of technology that automatic change detection and cueing using SAR images is insufficient. Through this study, the requirements of automatic change detection and cueing function using multi-temporal KOMPSAT-5 SAR satellite images were derived and a prototype program was developed. This prototype program aims to secure independent SAR utilization technology and promote the utilization of domestic SAR satellite information by practitioners in public sector organizations in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.327-336
• /
• 2019

The caldera lake "Chun-ji" is located at the summit of Baekdu volcano, which is in the border of China and North Korea. Chun-ji Lake has altitude 2,189 m above sea level. The Chun-ji is freezing in the winter when the water temperature goes down to zero for a year, and it melts in the season when the water temperature goes up again. However,since it is located at a high altitude, there are many cloudy days, and it is difficult to observe with optical images. For this reason, radar images, which are less influenced by weather than optical images, are more effective for observing the ice of heaven and earth. In this study, 75 TerraSAR-X images from chun-ji area were used for analysis from 2015 to 2017, and the calculated ice area and temperature changes were analyzed. As a result, the ice of the caldera lake formed was formed in early December and slowly melted until mid-April. During this period, temperatures in the Samjiyeon area were about $-10^{\circ}C$ when ice was produced, and the temperature was about $0^{\circ}C$ in mid-April when it was thawing. Correlation coefficients between ice surface area and temperature in winter 2015 and 2016, where global ice is produced,show a high correlation of -0.82 and -0.75. In addition to the results of this study, it can be used as an indicator to monitor the volcanic activity by comparing the result of the recent volcanic activity with the result of the increase in water temperature using various imagery.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.37 no.3
• /
• pp.503-514
• /
• 2021

Rice production with adequate level of area is important for decision making of rice supply and demand policy. It is essential to grasp rice cultivation areas in advance for estimating rice production of the year. This study was carried out to classify paddy rice cultivation in Gimje-si using sentinel-1 SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and UAV imagery in early July. Time-series Sentinel-1A and 1B images acquired from early May to early July were processed to convert into sigma naught (dB) images using SNAP (SeNtinel application platform, Version 8.0) toolbox provided by European Space Agency. Farm map and parcel map, which are spatial data of vector polygon, were used to stratify paddy field population for classifying rice paddy cultivation. To distinguish paddy rice from other crops grown in the paddy fields, we used the decision tree method using threshold levels and random forest model. Random forest model, trained by mainly rice cultivation area and rice and soybean cultivation area in UAV image area, showed the best performance as overall accuracy 89.9%, Kappa coefficient 0.774. Through this, we were able to confirm the possibility of early estimation of rice cultivation area in Gimje-si using UAV image.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.30 no.4
• /
• pp.431-444
• /
• 2014

As applications of spaceborne SAR imagery are extended, there are increased demands for accurate registrations for better understanding and fusion of radar images. It becomes common to adopt multi-resolution SAR images to apply for wide area reconnaissance. Geometric correction of the SAR images can be performed by using satellite orbit and attitude information. However, the inherent errors of the SAR sensor's attitude and ground geographical data tend to cause geometric errors in the produced SAR image. These errors should be corrected when the SAR images are applied for multi-temporal analysis, change detection applications and image fusion with other sensor images. The undesirable ground registration errors can be corrected with respect to the true ground control points in order to produce complete SAR products. Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF) technique is an efficient algorithm to extract ground control points from images but is considered to be inappropriate to apply to SAR images due to high speckle noises. In this paper, an attempt is made to apply SURF algorithm to SAR images for image registration and fusion. Matched points are extracted with respect to the varying parameters of Hessian and SURF matching thresholds, and the performance is analyzed by measuring the imaging matching accuracies. A number of performance measures concerning image registration are suggested to validate the use of SURF for spaceborne SAR images. Various simulations methodologies are suggested the validate the use of SURF for the geometric correction and image registrations and it is shown that a good choice of input parameters to the SURF algorithm should be made to apply for the spaceborne SAR images of moderate resolutions.

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

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.191-202
• /
• 2012

A high resolution satellite imagery such as KOMPSAT-2 includes a material containing rational polynomial coefficient (RPC) for three-dimensional geopositioning. However, image geometries which are calculated from the RPC must have inevitable systematic errors. Thus, it is necessary to correct systematic errors of the RPC using several ground control points (GCPs). In this paper, we propose an efficient method for automatic correction of image geometries using tie points of a stereo pair and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) without GCPs. This method includes four steps: 1) tie points extraction, 2) determination of the ground coordinates of the tie points, 3) refinement of the ground coordinates using SRTM DEM, and 4) RPC adjustment model parameter estimation. We validates the performance of the proposed method using KOMPSAT-2 stereo pair. The root mean square errors (RMSE) achieved from check points (CPs) were about 3.55 m, 9.70 m and 3.58 m in X, Y;and Z directions. This means that we can automatically correct the systematic error of RPC using SRTM DEM.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.52-63
• /
• 2021

In previous research, the coastal wetlands were detected by using the vegetation indices or land cover classification maps derived from the multispectral bands of the satellite or aerial imagery, and this approach caused the various limitations for detecting the coastal wetlands with high accuracy due to the difficulty of acquiring both land cover and topographic information by using the single remote sensing data. This research suggested the efficient methodology for detecting the coastal wetlands using the sentinel-2 satellite image and SRTM(Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM (Digital Elevation Model) acquired in Gomsoman Bay, west coasts of South Korea through the following steps. First, the NDWI(Normalized Difference Water Index) image was generated using the green and near-infrared bands of the given Sentinel-2 satellite image. Then, the binary image that separating lands and waters was generated from the NDWI image based on the pixel intensity value 0.2 as the threshold and the other binary image that separating the upper sea level areas and the under sea level areas was generated from the SRTM DEM based on the pixel intensity value 0 as the threshold. Finally, the coastal wetland map was generated by overlaying analysis of these binary images. The generated coastal wetland map had the 94% overall accuracy. In addition, the other types of wetlands such as inland wetlands or mountain wetlands were not detected in the generated coastal wetland map, which means that the generated coastal wetland map can be used for the coastal wetland management tasks.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.38 no.6_1
• /
• pp.1357-1369
• /
• 2022

Cloud removal is an essential image processing step for any task requiring time-series optical images, such as vegetation monitoring and change detection. This paper presents a two-stage cloud removal method that combines conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) with regression-based calibration to construct a cloud-free time-series optical image set. In the first stage, the cGANs generate initial prediction results using quantitative relationships between optical and synthetic aperture radar images. In the second stage, the relationships between the predicted results and the actual values in non-cloud areas are first quantified via random forest-based regression modeling and then used to calibrate the cGAN-based prediction results. The potential of the proposed method was evaluated from a cloud removal experiment using Sentinel-2 and COSMO-SkyMed images in the rice field cultivation area of Gimje. The cGAN model could effectively predict the reflectance values in the cloud-contaminated rice fields where severe changes in physical surface conditions happened. Moreover, the regression-based calibration in the second stage could improve the prediction accuracy, compared with a regression-based cloud removal method using a supplementary image that is temporally distant from the target image. These experimental results indicate that the proposed method can be effectively applied to restore cloud-contaminated areas when cloud-free optical images are unavailable for environmental monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.38 no.6_3
• /
• pp.1749-1760
• /
• 2022

In modern society, human and social damages caused by natural disasters and frequent disaster accidents have been increased year by year. Prompt access to dangerous disaster sites that are inaccessible or inaccessible using state-of-the-art Earth observation equipment such as satellites, drones, and survey robots, and timely collection and analysis of meaningful disaster information. It can play an important role in protecting people's property and life throughout the entire disaster management cycle, such as responding to disaster sites and establishing mid-to long-term recovery plans. This special issue introduces the National Disaster Management Research Institute (NDMI)'s disaster management technology that utilizes various Earth observation platforms, such as mobile survey vehicles equipped with close-range disaster site survey sensors, drones, and survey robots, as well as satellite technology, which is a tool of remote earth observation. Major research achievements include detection of damage from water disasters using Google Earth Engine, mid- and long-term time series observation, detection of reservoir water bodies using Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and artificial intelligence, analysis of resident movement patterns in case of forest fire disasters, and data analysis of disaster safety research. Efficient integrated management and utilization plan research results are summarized. In addition, research results on scientific investigation activities on the causes of disasters using drones and survey robots during the investigation of inaccessible and dangerous disaster sites were described.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.38 no.6_4
• /
• pp.1935-1943
• /
• 2022

The development and application of a high-resolution soil moisture mapping method using satellite imagery has been considered one of the major research themes in remote sensing. In this study, soil moisture mapping in the test area of Jeju Island was performed. The soil moisture was calculated with optical images using linearly adjusted Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) polarization images and incident angle. SAR Backscatter data, Analysis Ready Data (ARD) provided by Google Earth Engine (GEE), was used. In the soil moisture processing process, the optical image was applied to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) by surface reflectance of KOMPSAT-3 satellite images and the land cover map of Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). When the SAR image and the optical images are fused, the reliability of the soil moisture product can be improved. To validate the soil moisture mapping product, a comparative analysis was conducted with normalized difference water index (NDWI) products by the KOMPSAT-3 image and those of the Landsat-8 satellite. As a result, it was shown that the soil moisture map and NDWI of the study area were slightly negative correlated, whereas NDWI using the KOMPSAT-3 images and the Landsat-8 satellite showed a highly correlated trend. Finally, it will be possible to produce precise soil moisture using KOMPSAT optical images and KOMPSAT SAR images without other external remotely sensed images, if the soil moisture calculation algorithm used in this study is further developed for the KOMPSAT-5 image.