Non-Clear Typhoon Eye Tracking by Artificial Ant Colony

Generally, large volumes of complicate and precise computation are required during the tracking process of typhoon eye, especially non-clear ones, which is one of the most important aspects in the forecast and analysis of typhoon. Satellite digital photograph and corresponding interpretation technology make it possible to carry out such task by aid of modern digital and computer means of image processing. By means of constructing solution space and heuristic information, artificial ant colony (AAC) can be used to search for the best path in a constrained region, which provides an approach to obtain precise contour, and is proved to reach the best feasible boundary with minimum energy function value. Therefore, the contour of non-clear typhoon eye can be tracked intelligently, based on the satellite photograph. As an example, the computing methodology produced in this paper was applied in experimental cyclone forecasting by the Shanghai Meteorology Center. The proposed solutions was confirmed to have the potential for successful application to the problem of non-clear typhoon eye tracking, and the system is effective and the performance errors are acceptable for practical applications