Remote Sensing of Ships and Offshore Oil Platforms and Mapping the Marine Oil Spill Risk Source in the Bohai Sea

Oil spills from marine transportation and oil exploration are of great importance in marine environment protection. Marine oil platforms and ships which have similar spectral characteristics and size can be simultaneously extracted from satellite images. Oil platforms and ships have different modes of behavior: offshore ships usually move with time, and even if they are moored, this mooring status won’t last for months or years; while oil platforms are usually in the same place for a long time till they are removed or destroyed in disasters. In this paper, a detection strategy of ships and offshore oil platforms on the basis of remote sensing images and geographic information system was proposed. Satellite images were used to detect the distribution of ships and oil platforms in the Bohai Sea, and the map of oil spill risk from ships and oil rigs in the Bohai Sea was generated on the basis of an averaged oil spill probability.