Operational use of RADARSAT SAR for marine monitoring and surveillance

RADARSAT will be the first spaceborne SAR mission planned for operational use. Primary operational applications will be monitoring of sea ice, ice bergs, sea state, ocean surface features, coastal processes and ship activity. A dedicated workstation system, the Ocean Feature Workstation, has been designed and implemented to perform routine operational analysis of SAR ocean imagery for extraction of surface feature information, wave data and positions of vessels. The extracted information is compiled as small information product files for rapid distribution to end users. The system will be installed at Gatineau Satellite Station in August 1995.