Hydrocarbon Pollution Detection and Mapping Based on the Combination of Various Hyperspectral Imaging Processing Tools

Oil extraction and transportation may lead to small or large scale accidental spills, whether at sea or on land. Detecting these spills is a major problem that can be addressed by means of hyperspectral images and specific processing methods. In this work, several cases of onshore oil spills are studied. First, a controlled experiment was carried out: four boxes containing soil or sand mixed with crude oil or gasoil were deployed on the ONERA site near Fauga, France, and were overflown by HySpex hyperspectral cameras. Owing to this controlled experiment, different detection strategies were developed and tested, with a particular focus on the most automated methods requiring the least supervision. The methods developed were then applied to two very different cases: mapping of the shoreline contaminated due to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) platform based on AVIRIS images (AVIRIS: Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer), and detection of a tar pit on a former oil exploration site. The detection strategy depends on the type of oil, light or heavy, recently or formerly spilled, and on the substrate. In the first case (controlled experiment), the proposed methods included spectral index calculations, anomaly detection and spectral unmixing. In the case of DWH, spectral indices were computed and the unmixing method was tested. Finally, to detect the tar pit, a strategy based on anomaly detection and spectral indices was applied. In all the cases studied, the proposed methods were successful in detecting and mapping the oil pollution.

Automated summary

This study investigates the detection of oil spills using hyperspectral images and specific processing methods, successfully applying spectral index calculations, anomaly detection, and spectral unmixing to detect and map oil pollution in controlled experiments and real cases.