Assessing Stationary Maritime Traffic Density in Territorial Dispute Zones Using Open-Source Sentinel-2 Satellite Imagery

Although Sentinel-2 images are seldom employed for object detection due to their lower resolution, their accessibilityand cost-effectiveness make them a valuable tool for continuous global maritime monitoring. This paper proposesusing publicly available satellite imagery to detect ships in the maritime conflict zones of the South China Sea,aiming to assess the intensity of conflict through a fine-tuned YOLO object detection model. Ship density isestimated by aggregating detected ships over each area, demonstrating that Sentinel-2 is a valuable data sourcefor this task. Additionally, the correlation between the number of ships detected in a given week and the numberof articles reporting on conflicts in the relevant maritime zones during the same time period was calculated.Preliminary results suggest that this approach could serve as a valuable indicator for evaluating military tensions inthe region, enhancing conflict transparency and supporting risk reduction efforts.