Sea State Estimation from Uncalibrated, Monoscopic Video

Video of the ocean surface is used as a means for estimating the sea state. Time series of pixel intensity values are given as input to a method that uses the Kalman filter and the least squares approximate solution for estimating the uncalibrated video amplitude spectrum. A method is proposed for scaling this spectrum to metres with the use of an empirical model of the ocean. The significant wave height is estimated from the calibrated video amplitude spectrum. The results are tested against two sets of video data, and buoy measurements in both cases are solely used for indicating the true state. For significant wave height values between 0.5 and 3.6 m, the maximum observed value of root mean square error is 0.37 m and of mean absolute percentage error 16%.