Introduction:
With the ongoing development of human civilization the consumption of natural resources has increased a great deal. Oceans are one of most blissful gifts from nature which has been used as one of the primary mode of communication for individuals as well as business communities.
Coastal zones are the connection between the terrestrial and marine environment. In the whole world 84% of the countries have a coastline, either in the form of open oceans, inland seas, or both. The global coastlines exceed almost 1.6 million kilometers.
Being the very effective medium of communication also makes it an easy medium of terrorism, violence or any other unauthorized entry. So protecting one’s coastal area has become very crucial. Measures to monitor and assess how these areas are changing have been taken and being improved everyday to strengthen the security of coastal boarders.
The coastal surveillance helps protect coastlines and the maritime domain. This system is based on different technology based equipments which is suitable for the challenging weather and other parameters of coastal area. This surveillance system not only protects the coastal boarder from any unauthorized breach or criminal offence, but track and control foreign vessels wanting to get access to the territorial waters or the main land.
Maritime surveillance is crucial for law enforcement, migration monitoring, and national security policies. Since the early days it has been a challenging task. The coastal surveillance is based on the signals that have been transmitted by telecommunication geostationary satellites. It helps the commercial and military seagoing and inland sailing vessels.
Maritime surveillance using the geostationary satellite has been done with the algorithm including ship detection and ship tracking. In the ship-tracking procedure, motion model based geographical coordinates is been extracted, and the multiple tracking method is used to track ships .This removes false targets.
Geostationary satellite for coastal area surveillance:
It is a remote sensing system, useful thing for border sensing over large areas. Almost 40 percent of the earth’s surface can be visible with a single geostationary satellite. Thus three such kinds of satellites, separated by 120 degrees of longitude, will provide coverage of the entire planet. Generally they are placed everywhere except the north and south geographic poles. These geostationary satellites can be accessed using a directional antenna, usually a small dish, aimed at the spot in the sky where the satellite appears to hover. An earthbound directional antenna can be aimed and then left in position without further manual management. With the use of highly directional antennas, any other interference, such as surface-based sources, other satellites, is not required that much.
But to monitor feed from the geostationary satellite specific software is required at the coastal monitoring station. This kind of software being used at defense sector, such as coastal border security base camps or intelligence centers. It is required to deter terrorist infiltration and illegal immigration.
Satellite technology monitors ships, submarine or vessels at the coastal border.
Geostationary satellite plays many important roles in securing the costal border. The earth observation geostationary satellite that provides the detailed images the ships or vassals. Sensors are even able to penetrate cloud, detect chemical traces and identify vassals under deep sea.
The defense officials then captures still images as well as high-resolution video of the disputed coastal borders. These satellites pick up ships and vassals initiated by terrorists and migrants seeking access inside the country.
It not only makes it possible for the widely scattered costal boarder area.
The Geostationary (GEO) satellites can detect the water temperature and can get advance incoming submarine warning so the defense system can take necessary actions accordingly. Geostationary satellite navigation constellations provide real time data about the submarine invasion to the defense system with their precise location and local time.
Technology used to design the coastal area surveillance:
Different types of sensors:
Visible-light sensors:
A light sensor is a photoelectric device that converts light energy (photons) detected to electrical energy (electrons).
Infra-red sensors:
Thermal infra-red sensing can be effective at delineating an oil slick that depends upon,
1) The time of day.
2) Different heat capacity of oil and water;
3) Reduction of heat transfer across the air-water interface as a result of surface tension changes.
Ultra-violet sensors:
Oil slicks are highly reflecting in the ultra-violet (UV) part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Microwave sensors:
Oil on water, smoothens the surface and under certain sea, which can dramatically affect the surface roughness generated by waves and ripples.
Laser fluorosensors:
This technology which has significant potential and overcomes this drawback is the use of airborne UV lasers (300–340 µm) to excite fluorescence in the oil which can then be detected by a sensor.
Airborne sensors:
Airborne multispectral scanning has been utilized for thermal plume mapping and does
Not suffer from the temporal and spatial limitations of satellite imagery.
Application:
- Marine protected areas
