Detecting aquaculture platforms using COSMO SkyMed

Aquaculture are a very valuable asset for many coastal countries and in the future they will play an important role in food security. Satellite remote sensing can improve the temporal and geo-spatial analysis of such marine facilities. Detecting platforms used for fish and shellfish farming provides a way to monitor assets and check they do not get damaged by storms. It also allows to identify illegal placement of structures in areas which should not host farms. In this work, we want to evaluate the use of COMSO SkyMed polarimetric acquisitions. In particular, we want to use a novel methodology called intensity Dual-Pol Ratio Anomaly Detector (iDPolRAD). Extensive work has been carried out on detecting ships using space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. However, the identification of smaller and non-metallic targets is still challenging especially when the sea conditions are rough. This work presents an assessment of different detectors and polarimetric information for the detection of wooden mussels platforms. The results show that the use of dual polarimetric information can improve the detection performance.