Remote sensing of the oil spills caused by ships: A review

Oil spills caused by ships can be categorized as accidental and operational oil spills. For operational oil spills caused by illegal discharge, an efficient remote sensing system for routine surveillance on oil spills needs to be established. For the oil spills caused by ship accidents, the quantitative inversion on some key properties provides useful information for treatment and assessment. The spaceborne synthetic aperture radar is mostly used for both operational and the accidental oil spills due to its effectiveness of oil spill detection under various environments. Optical remote sensing is applied in the cases where the detailed information about oil spills needs to be identified. Some other sensing techniques that may be useful to monitor oil spills caused by ships are also discussed. By jointly utilizing various remote sensing techniques, it is expected to form a comprehensive sensing network and prevent the negative consequences caused by oil pollution from ships.