Possibilities and limits of remote sensing for the verification of international agreements: algorithms to detect changes at nuclear plants

The use of commercial satellite images for the verification of nuclear treaties has been suggested recently in the context of a new protocol extending the rights of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear activities within its member states. The present paper describes an application of principal component and canonical correlation analysis for change detection of Landsat images of the interim nuclear fuel storage and exploratory mine at Gorleben, Germany.