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Suez Canal blockage, Satellite remote sensing's perspective

A huge ship named as 'Ever Given' owned by Taiwanese firm was travelling to Netherlands from China got stuck in the Suez Canal of Egypt. This canal accounts for approximately 12% of world's trade volume (source: LA times). According to experts, it could become a cataclysm in the global shipping.


Various satellite imageries have been utilized to visualize this issue from space.

As seen from Sentinel-2 satellite imageries, thanks to ESA.


This ship got stuck due to lower visibility by sandstorm in the area. This can also be visualized from space-

Sentinel-2 Images showing normal and sandstorm days


The very high resolution world view images have also shown ship's exact position in the Suez Canal

Tweet from Maxar Tech. showing ship's position through WorldView-2 image


We tried to check this from SAR imagery also. This gives a clear picture of pre and post event. It shows traffic situation in the water ways near Suez Canal-

Pre and Post images from Sentinel-1 satellite (coutesy: ESA)


Traffic due to assembling of ships can be viewed in previous and below given image, in the northern side (of Suez canal) in Great Bitter lake and in southern side Suez Gulf. The white dots visible in the water body are ships showing massive traffic Jam.


This is the might of Space-borne Remote Sensing. Team Geoinformers


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