{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,31]],"date-time":"2025-12-31T18:25:22Z","timestamp":1767205522399,"version":"build-2238731810"},"reference-count":51,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,4,10]],"date-time":"2023-04-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1681084800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"state of Lower Saxony"},{"name":"Jade University Oldenburg"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.mdpi.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In the efforts to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the European sea borders, this work builds detection capabilities to help find refugee boats in distress. For this paper, we collected dual-pol and quad-pol synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data over a 12 m rubber inflatable in a test-bed lake near Berlin, Germany. To consider a real scenario, we prepared the vessel so that its backscattering emulated that of a vessel fully occupied with people. Further, we collected SAR imagery over the ocean with different sea states, categorized by incidence angle and by polarization. These were used to emulate the conditions for a vessel located in ocean waters. This setup enabled us to test nine well-known vessel-detection systems (VDS), to explore the capabilities of new detection algorithms and to benchmark different combinations of detectors (detector fusion) with respect to different sensor and scene parameters (e.g., the polarization, wind speed, wind direction and boat orientation). This analysis culminated in designing a system that is specifically tailored to accommodate different situations and sea states.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs15082008","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,4,11]],"date-time":"2023-04-11T01:33:03Z","timestamp":1681176783000},"page":"2008","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["The InflateSAR Campaign: Developing Refugee Vessel Detection Capabilities with Polarimetric SAR"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"15","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3663-5967","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peter","family":"Lanz","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computing Science, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Ammerl\u00e4nder Heerstra\u00dfe 114-118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany"},{"name":"Institute for Applied Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics, Jade University Oldenburg, Ofener Str. 16\/19, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4531-3102","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Armando","family":"Marino","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3004-4517","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Morgan David","family":"Simpson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5692-7855","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thomas","family":"Brinkhoff","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute for Applied Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics, Jade University Oldenburg, Ofener Str. 16\/19, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany"}]},{"given":"Frank","family":"K\u00f6ster","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computing Science, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Ammerl\u00e4nder Heerstra\u00dfe 114-118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany"},{"name":"Institute for AI Safety and Security, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Rathausallee 12, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany"}]},{"given":"Matthias","family":"M\u00f6ller","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty for Humanities and Cultural Sciences, Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg, Am Kranen, 96045 Bamberg, Germany"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,4,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"IOM (2023, March 23). 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