COSMO-SkyMed contribution in oil spill monitoring of the Mediterranean Sea

High resolution Cosmo-SkyMed SAR images are used for oil spill detection and ship identification on the Mediterranean Sea, in the framework of PRIMI Pilot Project currently developed by Italian Space Agency (ASI). The system consists of four components, two of them devoted to the analysis of the SAR and Optical satellites images for the slicks detection, an oil spill forecast subsystem and a central archive that provides web-gis services; a preliminary version of the system is already operational. Besides the slicks relevant information and detected ships on the analyzed scene, the system also provides meteorological and oceanographic information. The architecture of the system, the operational scenario and the preliminary results are presented. ©2009 IEEE.