• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_3
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• pp.997-1008
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• 2023

Ship detection at sea can be performed in various ways. In particular, satellites can provide wide-area surveillance, and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery can be utilized day and night and in all weather conditions. To propose an efficient ship detection method from SAR images, this study aimed to apply the You Only Look Once Version 5 (YOLOv5) model to Sentinel-1 images and to analyze the difference between individual vs. integrated models and the accuracy characteristics by polarization. YOLOv5s, which has fewer and lighter parameters, and YOLOv5x, which has more parameters but higher accuracy, were used for the performance tests (1) by dividing each polarization into HH, HV, VH, and VV, and (2) by using images from all polarizations. All four experiments showed very similar and high accuracy of 0.977 ≤ AP@0.5 ≤ 0.998. This result suggests that the polarization integration model using lightweight YOLO models can be the most effective in terms of real-time system deployment. 19,582 images were used in this experiment. However, if other SAR images,such as Capella and ICEYE, are included in addition to Sentinel-1 images, a more flexible and accurate model for ship detection can be built.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.1177-1186
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• 2021

As the Arctic melt ponds play an important role in determining the interannual variation of the sea ice extent and changes in the Arctic environment, it is crucial to monitor the Arctic melt ponds with high accuracy. Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which is the NASA's latest altimeter satellite based on the green laser (532 nm), observes the global surface elevation. When compared to the CryoSat-2 altimetry satellite whose along-track resolution is 250 m, ICESat-2 is highly expected to provide much more detailed information about Arctic melt ponds thanks to its high along-track resolution of 70 cm. The basic products of ICESat-2 are the surface height and the number of reflected photons. To aggregate the neighboring information of a specific ICESat-2 photon, the segments of photons with 10 m length were used. The standard deviation of the height and the total number of photons were calculated for each segment. As the melt ponds have the smoother surface than the sea ice, the lower variation of the height over melt ponds can make the melt ponds distinguished from the sea ice. When the melt ponds were extracted, the number of photons per segment was used to classify the melt ponds covered with open-water and specular ice. As photons are much more absorbed in the water-covered melt pondsthan the melt ponds with the specular ice, the number of photons persegment can distinguish the water- and ice-covered ponds. As a result, the suggested melt pond detection method was able to classify the sea ice, water-covered melt ponds, and ice-covered melt ponds. A qualitative analysis was conducted using the Sentinel-2 optical imagery. The suggested method successfully classified the water- and ice-covered ponds which were difficult to distinguish with Sentinel-2 optical images. Lastly, the pros and cons of the melt pond detection using satellite altimetry and optical images were discussed.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.535-544
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• 2021

Agricultural water occupies 48% of water demand, and management of agricultural reservoirs is essential for water resources management within agricultural basins. For more efficient use of agricultural water, monitoring the distribution of water resources in agricultural reservoirs and agricultural basins is required. Therefore, in this study, three threshold determination methods (i.e., fixed threshold, Otsu threshold, Kittler-Illingworth (KI) threshold) were compared to detect terrestrial water bodies using Sentinel-1 images for 3 years from 2018 to 2020. The purpose of this study was to evaluate methods for determining threshold values to more accurately estimate the reservoir area. In addition, by analyzing the relationship between the water surface and water storage at the Edong, Gosam, and Giheung reservoirs, water storage based on the SAR image was estimated and validated with observations. The thresholding method for detecting a waterbody was found to be the most accurate in the case of the KI threshold, and the water storage estimated by the KI threshold indicated a very high agreement (r = 0.9235, KGE' = 0.8691). Although the seasonal error characteristics were not observed, the problem of underestimation at high water levels may occur; the relationship between the water surface and the water storage could change rapidly. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the relationship between the water surface area and water storage through ground observation data for a more accurate estimation of water storage. If the use of SAR data through water resources satellites becomes possible in the future, based on the results of this study, it is judged that it will be beneficial for monitoring water storage and managing drought.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.6_4
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• pp.1341-1350
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• 2019

This research deals with algorithm for forest fire severity classification using multi-temporal KOMPSAT-3A image to mapping forest fire areas. The recent satellite of the KOMPSAT series, KOMPSAT-3A, demonstrates high resolution and multi-spectral imagery with infrared and high resolution electro-optical bands. However, there is a lack of research to classify forest fire severity using KOMPSAT-3A. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze forest fire severity using KOMPSAT-3A images. In addition, this research used pre-fire and post-fire Sentinel-2 with differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) to taking for burn severity distribution map. To test the effectiveness of the proposed procedure on April 4, 2019, Gangneung wildfires were considered as a case study. This research used the probability density function for the classification of forest fire damage severity based on R software, a free software environment of statistical computing and graphics. The burn severities were estimated by changing NDVI before and after forest fire. Furthermore, standard deviation of probability density function was used to calculate the size of each class interval. A total of five distribution of forest fire severity were effectively classified.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.418-418
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• 2023

가뭄은 농업, 환경 및 사회경제적인 조건에 영향을 미치는 주요 자연 재해로 우리나라는 2015년부터 지속적인 가뭄 상황을 겪고 있다. 지속된 가뭄으로 인해 토양의 수분함량이 변화하여 농작물의 생장 활동 등에 영향을 미쳐 수확량이 낮아질 수 있다. 토양수분은 경사나 토질 등 지형학적인 특성에 따라 민감하게 반응하는 수문인자로, 특성을 광역적으로 정확하게 판단하기 어렵기 때문에 고해상도 원격탐사 자료를 활용하여 토양수분의 거동을 파악하는 연구들이 진행되고 있다. 특히, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) 관측은 작물과 기본적인 토양의 유전체 및 기하학적 특성에 민감하게 반응하기 때문에, 토양수분 및 농업적 가뭄 분석 연구에 활용되고 있다. 본 연구는 2025년 발사될 예정인 C-band SAR 수자원 위성 산출물인 토양수분을 적용한 농업적 가뭄지수산정 알고리즘 기법 개발 연구를 위하여, 수자원 위성과 제원이 비슷한 Sentinel-1 자료를 통해 산정된 토양수분을 활용하여 농업적 가뭄지수인 Soil Moisture Drought Index (SMDI)를 산정하고자 한다. 산정된 SMDI의 검증을 위해 지점 관측된 토양수분 자료와 비교하여 Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) 분석 및 error matrix 기법 등을 활용하여 산정된 농업적 가뭄지수의 지역적 적용성을 파악하고자 한다. SAR 자료 기반의 농업적 가뭄지수 산정 알고리즘을 개발함으로써, 향후 제공될 수자원 위성의 자료를 활용한 가뭄 분석 연구에 활용될 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_2
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• pp.249-261
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• 2020

Coastal monitoring using multiple platforms/sensors is a very important tools for accurately understanding the changes in offshore marine environment and disaster with high temporal and spatial resolutions. However, integrated observation studies using multiple platforms and sensors are insufficient, and none of them have been evaluated for efficiency and limitation of convergence. In this study, we aimed to suggest an integrated observation method with multi-remote sensing platform and sensors, and to diagnose the utility and limitation. Integrated in situ surveys were conducted using Rhodamine WT fluorescent dye to simulate various marine disasters. In September 2019, the distribution and movement of RWT dye patches were detected using satellite (Kompsat-2/3/3A, Landsat-8 OLI, Sentinel-3 OLCI and GOCI), unmanned aircraft (Mavic 2 pro and Inspire 2), and manned aircraft platforms after injecting fluorescent dye into the waters of the South Sea-Yeosu Sea. The initial patch size of the RWT dye was 2,600 ㎡ and spread to 62,000 ㎡ about 138 minutes later. The RWT patches gradually moved southwestward from the point where they were first released,similar to the pattern of tidal current flowing southwest as the tides gradually decreased. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) image showed highest resolution in terms of spatial and time resolution, but the coverage area was the narrowest. In the case of satellite images, the coverage area was wide, but there were some limitations compared to other platforms in terms of operability due to the long cycle of revisiting. For Sentinel-3 OLCI and GOCI, the spectral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were the highest, but small fluorescent dye detection was limited in terms of spatial resolution. In the case of hyperspectral sensor mounted on manned aircraft, the spectral resolution was the highest, but this was also somewhat limited in terms of operability. From this simulation approach, multi-platform integrated observation was able to confirm that time,space and spectral resolution could be significantly improved. In the future, if this study results are linked to coastal numerical models, it will be possible to predict the transport and diffusion of contaminants, and it is expected that it can contribute to improving model accuracy by using them as input and verification data of the numerical models.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_3
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• pp.1373-1387
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• 2021

Forest fire poses a significant threat to the environment and society, affecting carbon cycle and surface energy balance, and resulting in socioeconomic losses. Widely used multi-spectral satellite image-based approaches for burned area detection have a problem in that they do not work under cloudy conditions. Therefore, in this study, Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from Europe Space Agency, which can be collected in all weather conditions, were used to identify forest fire damaged area based on a series of processes including Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and K-means clustering. Four forest fire cases, which occurred in Gangneung·Donghae and Goseong·Sokcho in Gangwon-do of South Korea and two areas in North Korea on April 4, 2019, were examined. The estimated burned areas were evaluated using fire reference data provided by the National Institute of Forest Science (NIFOS) for two forest fire cases in South Korea, and differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR) for all four cases. The average accuracy using the NIFOS reference data was 86% for the Gangneung·Donghae and Goseong·Sokcho fires. Evaluation using dNBR showed an average accuracy of 84% for all four forest fire cases. It was also confirmed that the stronger the burned intensity, the higher detection the accuracy, and vice versa. Given the advantage of SAR remote sensing, the proposed statistical processing and K-means clustering-based approach can be used to quickly identify forest fire damaged area across the Korean Peninsula, where a cloud cover rate is high and small-scale forest fires frequently occur.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_3
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• pp.1749-1760
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• 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
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• v.38 no.6_3
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• pp.1861-1869
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• 2022

Recent climate change can increase the frequency and damage of wildfires worldwide. It can also lead to the deterioration of the forest ecosystem and increase casualties and economic loss. Satellite-based indices for forest damage can facilitate an objective and rapid examination of burned areas and help analyze inaccessible places like North Korea. In this letter, we conducted a detection of burned areas in North Korea using the traditional Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to represent vegetation vitality, and the Fire Burn Index (FBI) and Forest Withering Index (FWI) that were recently developed. Also, we suggested a strategy for the satellite-based detection of burned areas in the Korean Peninsula as a result of comparing the four indices. Future work requires the examination of small-size wildfires and the applicability of deep learning technologies.

• Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.33-43
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• 2022

This study was conducted to monitor the vegetation recovery in the areas damaged by the forest fires on the east coast that occurred in April 2000. The study site was a forest fire-damaged area in Samcheok-si, Gangwon-do, and 21 monitoring areas (12 natural restoration sites, 9 artificial restoration sites) were selected to analyze the vegetation recovery trend since 1998. The vegetation recovery trend was compared by calculating the values according to the year using the difference Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) based on satellite images (Landsat TM/ETM+ and Sentinel-2A). As the result of this study, all 21 sites, vegetation was recovered, and both groups showed the greatest recovery in summer. In the case of the dNBR, the artificial restored sites showed higher values than the natural restored sites, and in the case of the NDVI, the natural restored sites were higher than the artificially restored sites in summer and autumn. However, the difference between the two groups of natural and artificial restoration sites was not significant. Therefore, the direction of forest restoration after forest fire damage can be effectively restored if properly implemented for the purpose of restoration of the target site.