Computer Program Monitors, Identifies Changing Ocean Features
December 23, 2010 11:03 AM
comment(s) - last by
Satellite map of the ocean off the west coast of Africa
(Source: Jose A. Piedra-Fernandez, University of Almeria, Spain)
Researchers plan to improve the program and use it to track changing environmental conditions
University of Almeria
researchers have built a computer program that is capable of monitoring and analyzing large amounts of satellite data in order to assist scientists in tracking changing environmental conditions.
James Wang, professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, and Jose A. Piedra-Fernandez, an assistant professor of information sciences and technology at the University of Almeria in Spain who is currently visiting Penn State, have designed the program to study a vast amount of satellite data and images in an attempt to monitor the ever-changing and intricate
. They are mainly focused on analyzing mesoscale regional ocean features within the images produced by satellites.
"All of the data and information that is continually collected by satellites and sensors can cause tons of problems for scientists, who simply don't have the time to analyze every pixel of every satellite image," said Wang. "Our goal has been to
provide a tool
that would create useful information or knowledge from this large pool of data."
To make this program, Wang and Piedra-Fernandez created a database of ocean structures and taught the program to recognize changes in the ocean. The computer program is similar to a Bayesian network, which uses probability to make decisions. Wang and Piedra-Fernandez made sure to make the program as complex as the climate itself by separating ocean regions from land regions, adjusting for possible earth-and-solar-based interference sources, and identifying features from particular regions of ocean. The program is then able to filter regions of the images by ranking relationships between features on scale based on relevance and strength. This allows the computer to recognize
like wakes, upwellings and eddies.
Researchers then tested the computer program on satellite images of oceans in the Mediterranean Coast, the Iberian Atlantic and close to the Canary Islands. The images were provided by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The tests consisted of over 1,000 real oceanic features, made up of 472 upwellings, 119 cloudy upwellings, 180 wakes, 40 cyclonic eddies, 10 anticyclonic eddies and 180 "misclassified" regions.
"In almost all cases, the proposed methodology improves the accuracy rate and reduces the number of features necessary to get a good ocean structures classification," said Piedra-Fernandez.
The next step is to add features such as chlorophyll and salinity concentrations. Researchers would also like to improve the image classification system.
was published in
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
RE: That's a great job
12/23/2010 6:19:32 PM
Don't be a Stiffly Stifferson.
"Mac OS X is like living in a farmhouse in the country with no locks, and Windows is living in a house with bars on the windows in the bad part of town." -- Charlie Miller
Study: New Model Says that CO2 Levels Ultimately Control Earth's Temp.
October 19, 2010, 2:15 PM
New Model Shows Stopping Global Warming Will Stop Ocean Acidification
August 24, 2010, 8:27 AM
U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor Team Up for “Integration Training”
November 19, 2014, 9:15 AM
U.S. Marshals Using Fake, Airplane-based Cell Towers to Scan Cell Phones of Americans
November 14, 2014, 9:05 AM
Ford Enlists Wind Energy Corp. to Provide Wind, Solar Energy to Four U.S. Dealerships
November 10, 2014, 10:58 AM
Disney Reveals Star Wars Ep. VII Title -- "The Force Awakens"
November 6, 2014, 3:45 PM
U.S. Navy Lockheed F-35C Completes First Carrier Landing
November 4, 2014, 12:44 PM
Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen Donates $100M to Fight Raging Ebola Epidemic
October 23, 2014, 6:05 PM
Most Popular Articles
Wal-Mart: Miss Thanksgiving, Get Xbox One + Master Chief Collection for $299
November 17, 2014, 9:40 PM
Sweden Mulls Labelling "Sexist" Video Games in the Wake of Gamergate
November 17, 2014, 2:00 PM
Nokia Lumia 635 LTE Windows Phone is Only $40 at Best Buy on Black Friday
November 18, 2014, 11:59 AM
It's Official: Twitter is Profitable "Junk"
November 16, 2014, 10:45 PM
Apple Releases OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite, iOS 8.1.1 Updates
November 17, 2014, 1:43 PM
Latest Blog Posts
Costco Gives Employees Thanksgiving Off; Wal-Mart Leads "Black Thursday" Charge
Oct 29, 2014, 9:57 PM
"Bear Selfies" Fad Could Turn Deadly, Warn Nevada Wildlife Officials
Oct 28, 2014, 12:00 PM
The Surface Mini That Was Never Released Gets "Hands On" Treatment
Sep 26, 2014, 8:22 AM
ISIS Imposes Ban on Teaching Evolution in Iraq
Sep 17, 2014, 5:22 PM
Space Terrorism is a Looming Threat For the United States
Apr 23, 2014, 7:47 PM
More Blog Posts
Copyright 2014 DailyTech LLC. -
Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information