A study on ocean oil spill detection using different ERS SAR resolution data

Different resolutions of ERS SAR data are available at CRISP. They include the full-resolution PRI data with 12.5 m of pixel size, the intermediate-resolution in-house 1K TIFF data with 100 m of pixel size and the low-resolution web-site quick-look JPEC data with 333 m of pixel size. This paper aims to make a comparison among these three formats for ocean oil slick detection, so as to understand their advantages and disadvantages. A total of 9 scenes at different locations were selected for the study. Results show that slick numbers detected from a scene decrease with the image resolution, whereas no significant difference has been found on slick area. The PRI format is suggested for more accurate detection and the 1K TIFF format for quick and rough detection, whereas the JPEG format is not encouraged.