Estimation of vessel traffic density from Suomi NPP VIIRS day/night band

Continuous observation of change in vessels activity is important to detect the events and understand the circumstances within the maritime environment. In this paper, we propose the estimation and visualization method of vessel traffic density from day/night band in Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) in order to detect the activity of small vessels that their location data is not reporting by Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Moreover, we investigate the proposed visualization method in the application on the region of South China Sea.