Multi-Frequency Approach for Oil Spill Remote Sensing Detection

Lebanon witnessed one of its biggest dangerous environmental crisis due to the oil spill caused by Israel bombard of fuel storage tanks in war 2006. Official reports stated that around 15000 tons of heavy fuel oil spilled in sea water. The spill threatened the maritime and human life and caused severe environmental disasters. On an international scale, the European Space Agency (ESA) stated that more than 4.5 million tons of oil is the estimate of the annual spill worldwide. Therefore, it is really crucial to have an oil spill detection system that is able to specify the spill area and to provide statistical information about the situation. One of the main techniques used nowadays is airborne and satellite remote sensing systems. The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) lunched in 2016 the need to use a complementary system to the present satellite maritime surveillance system. In our work, we propose the use of drones for oil spill detection. In this paper, we present a multi-frequency technique in order to detect thick oil spill in ocean. This technique is also capable of providing an estimation of the oil thickness from reflectivity measurements affected by ocean roughness and noise in electronic devices. Numerical simulations are calculated using High Frequency Electromagnetic Field Simulation (HFSS) validating the theoretical calculations.