Rip currents detection based on Sentinel-1 dual-polarization SAR data

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in rip currents as an emerging public health issue for researchers. This study aims to detect and identify breaking waves region and surf zone from Sentinel-1 images, and extract the rip currents on the Portuguese coast beach. From Sentienl-1 GRD data of two scenes, it shows bright features and dark features as a “jig-saw tooth” appearance, respectively. In this paper, polarization difference of VV-polarization and VH-polarization supports to enhance the contrast between rip currents and background, and the edge detection operator is applied to identify wave breaking area and surf area shown promising result. The area, extension length and flow direction of rip currents are extracted from the image well.