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Audiences

Activities

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Maritime Surveillance

User Requirements

Expected Results and Benefits

SAR Capabilities

Ice and iceberg monitoring

Ice Concentration
Stage of development
Floe size
Ridging
Ice Strength

Assuring safe and efficient maritime navigation in hazardous ice conditions.
Improved Weather Forecast.
Supporting Canada's multi-billion maritime trade and northern sovereignty.

"RADARSAT data has proven to be a very cost-effective way of monitoring ice conditions throughout Canadian waters and has enabled us to expand our service and reduce the CIS budgets by about $6 million dollars a year in terms of data acquisition."

B. Ramsay, CIS

Marine winds

Frequent and high-resolution near-surface wind information.

Improving weather forecasting and warning systems.
Support to marine operations.
Site selection for wind farms, oil spill drift information, search and rescue support.

SAR-derived surface wind-speed image at 1-kilometer resolution from a RADARSAT-1 image.

Oil Pollution Monitoring

Detection and mapping of oil spills with minimum width of 100 m.
Detection and positioning of adjacent ships within the same surveillance swath.
Concurrent estimates of surface wind vector over ocean.

Near real-time reports on oil spills.
Improving Canada's response to the monitoring, containment and clean-up of oil spills.
Contributing to surveillance efforts of ISTOP.
Protection of sensitive coastal zone from environmental pollution.

"Availability of RADARSAT-1 data is the biggest technological blessing to the peaople to counter this large scale disaster."

Makoto Higashi, General Manager, Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan

Ship Detection

Detect ships >= 25m length in up to sea state 5.
Detecting vessels > 100 tonns in up to sea state 5.
Detection of illegal fishing by foreign vessels in Canadian waters.

Protection of fisheries against over-exploitation and illegal shipping.
Enhanced maritime domain awareness of Canada's coasts and their approaches.
Improved security and support to sovereighty.

RADARSAT-1's capability to detect ships has enebled it to become a valuable resource for maritime surveillance programs.