Use of radarsat data in the Canadian Ice Service

• Published in: Canadian journal of remote sensing 1998-03, Vol.24 (1), p.36-42
• Main Authors: RAMSAY, B, MANORE, M, WEIR, L, WILSON, K, BRADLEY, D
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied geophysics; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Internal geophysics; Marine geology
• ISSN: 0703-8992; 1712-7971
• DOI: 10.1080/07038992.1998.10874689

The Canadian Ice Service (CIS) is the Canadian Government Agency responsible for providing ice information over Canada's offshore areas for marine operators. The launch of RADARSAT in November, 1995, has provided a major new input to this program. Data from the on-board C-band HH-polarised SAR sensor s acquired in near real time from the Canadian Data Processing Facility (CDPF) at Gatineau, Quebec via a T1 digital link. Ice information products are then developed at the Ice Centre in Ottawa and transmitted to marine clients. The major client is the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) who receives the imagery and derived products on board their icebreaking vessels and at the Ice Operations Offices, and displays them on Windows NT-based systems known as Ice-Vu. This paper will describe the end-to-end system that has been developed for acquiring RADARSAT digital imagery, producing ice data products and transmitting them to marine clients in near real time. The process for analyzing the data and providing ice information to the Coast Guard and other marine clients will be described, and examples of SCANSAR image data and derived ice navigation products will be shown. The image quality of SCANSAR imagery as it relates to ice information extraction will be discussed as will operational benefits to the CIS. Currently, automatic ice information extraction algorithms are being developed in order to fully exploit the large quantity of data and improve the timeliness for the users. An Ice Tracking system, which calculates ice displacements from coincident RADARSAT image pairs, is now running at the Ice Centre in an operational demonstration mode. Additionally, an ice/no ice classifier as a precursor to a fully operational sea ice classification system has been undergoing testing. These two algorithms will be described, along with a Marine Information System (MAST) which will incorporate these and other algorithms into a suite of tools for marine information analysis on a variety of data sources.