Rst-based oil spill detection and monitoring using optical data.

Oil spills in the sea is one of the most serious hazard for coastal and marine environments. The main contribution to oceans oil pollution is related to operational discharge from tankers (e.g. oil dumped during cleaning operations) that spread in the sea the equivalent of one full-tanker disaster every week. In order to reduce the environmental impact of such a kind of hazards, timely detection and continuously updated information are fundamental and satellite remote sensing could give an important contribution in such a direction. In particular meteorological satellite, thanks to their high temporal resolution and to an easy data delivery, can be profitably used for a near real time sea monitoring. Recently, two new methodologies for oil spill detection and monitoring, both based on the general Robust Satellite Technique (RST) approach, have been proposed. The first one, based on the multi-temporal analysis of AVHRR Thermal Infrared (TIR), have shown good capability in automatically detect, with high level of reliability, oil spill presence. The second one, by using MODIS visible (VIS) data, have been applied, with encouraging results, for a detailed mapping of the oil slick. In this paper we have exported the RST AVHRR TIR approach to MODIS TIR data in order to guarantee the availability of both the methodologies and their specific advantages (high reliability in TIR channels, better spatial resolution in the VIS) by using a single multispectral sensor. Preliminary results obtained applying the proposed methodology for an oil spill event occurred during Lebanon war in 2006 are shown and discussed.