Evaluation of the spatial distribution, in percent coverage, of the oil spilled during the trecate blow-out, based on the analysis of airborne hyperspectral MIVIS data

On February 1994 a large area close to the Trecate town has been interested by an oil blow-out from AGIP rig located within the Ticino Region Park. One month later an airborne survey has been carried out in the framework of the CNR LARA Project, by utilizing Daedalus AA500 MIVIS spectrometer with 102 channels from Visible to Thermal Infrared. Different authors stress, for oil slicks discrimination, the utility of laser and microwaves based techniques, coverage by spilled oil. This task has been performed by applying hyperspectral unmixing methods to the MIVIS calibrated data, obtaining an oil fractional images with respect to other chosen end-members. The analysis has shown a good agreement between the results of the unconstrained unmixing techniques applied to MIVIS data and the ground truths, offering a tool useful to quantify in a synoptic overview the effect of the oil spill over land, by relating the ppm of oil with the oil hyperspectral information gathered by MIVIS.