Terrestrial Oil Spill Detection and Environmental Impact Monitoring using Multi-Source Earth Observation Data

在过去几年中，在加拿大阿尔伯塔省等地区，对陆地或陆上石油和废水泄漏的担忧大大增加。例如，2012年春天，一条管道泄漏了950万升工业废水，这是北美近代史上最大的泄漏事件，发生在阿尔伯塔省北部扎马市东北约20公里处。许多具有重要生态意义的生态系统，包括河流、湖泊、湿地和植被区，都受到这种泄漏的威胁。随着管道的建立和石油通过铁路等其他方式运输的增加（加拿大铁路协会）以及石油泄漏的可能性增加，迫切需要开发早期检测泄漏，提取和划定受影响区域的方法，并监测补救过程的有效性。遥感是一种快速和成本效益高的技术，可用于溢油探测和环境影响监测。虽然地球观测（EO）数据的价值在海上泄漏的情况下得到了很好的报道和实际应用，但它在陆地事件中的应用要少得多，部分原因是EO数据和陆地泄漏测绘技术的实用性受到限制。该研究计划的目标是开发有效的方法来检测地面石油/废水泄漏，并利用时间序列（事件前后）多源EO数据监测其对环境的影响，包括基于卫星的高分辨率光学、极化合成孔径雷达（SAR）和地面电磁测量。拟议的研究将建立在早期研究基于对象的图像分析的基础上，以使用多源EO数据。拟议的研究将使用加拿大航天局（CSA）通过科学与业务应用研究（SOAR）项目提供的SAR数据，这些数据是在阿尔伯塔省Zama市附近的一个已知泄漏地点获得的。这项工作将由一名待招聘的博士生来完成。预期的结果将是一个框架，包括用于陆地石油/废水泄漏检测的图像处理技术、受影响地区的划定以及使用观测数据监测受影响的生态系统。它还为今后使用基于卫星的EO技术进行石油和天然气相关活动监测的研究奠定了基础

Concerns about terrestrial or land-based oil and waste water spills have increased considerably in the past several years in the areas such as Alberta, Canada. For example, in spring 2012, a pipeline leaked 9.5 million liters of industrial waste water, the North America's biggest spill in recent history, about 20 kilometres of Northeast of Zama City in Northern Alberta [1]. Many ecologically important ecosystems including rivers, lakes, wetlands and vegetation areas are threatened by such spills. With increasing establishment of pipelines and shipment of oil by other means such as rail (Railway Association of Canada) and higher possibility of oil spills, there is an immediate need to develop methods for early detection of spill, extraction and delineation of impacted areas, and monitoring the effectiveness of remediation process. Remote sensing is a rapid and cost effective technology that can be utilized for oil spill detection and environmental impact monitoring.While the value of earth observation (EO) data has been well reported and operationally applied in the case of maritime spills, it has been much less applied for land-based events partially because of the perceived limitations in the utility of EO data and techniques for terrestrial spill mapping. The objective of this research program is to develop effective methods for detecting terrestrial oil/waste water spill and monitoring its impact on the environment using time-series (before and after the event) multi-source EO data including satellite-based high resolution optical, polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground-based electromagnetic survey measurements. The proposed research will build on earlier works investigating object-based image analysis to use multi-source EO data. The proposed research will use SAR data provided by Canadian Space Agency (CSA) through the Science and Operational Application Research (SOAR) program acquired over a known spill site near Zama City in Alberta. This work will be performed by a PhD student to be recruited. The anticipated outcome will be a framework including image processing techniques for terrestrial oil/waste water spill detection, delineation of impacted area and monitoring of affected ecosystems using EO data. It, also, establishes a base for future research on oil and gas related activities monitoring using satellite-based EO techniques.**