Resource Management and Litigation Support

Resource Management and Litigation Support is Ocean Imaging's remote-sensing service for agencies that manage coastal waters, wetlands and marine habitats, and for parties in environmental disputes. It combines satellite, aircraft and drone (UAS) imagery with field observations in four service lines.

Water quality and runoff monitoring. Since 2002 Ocean Imaging has used satellite and aerial imagery to detect and track wastewater plumes from ocean outfalls and sediment plumes from stormwater runoff and river outflows off San Diego, for the City of San Diego's Public Utilities Department and the US International Boundary and Water Commission, as part of monitoring required by discharge permits. The 2025 programme used Sentinel-2, Sentinel-1 radar, Sentinel-3, Landsat 8 and 9, MODIS, VIIRS and SPOT 6 data. Most imagery is processed and posted to a password-protected website within one to two days of acquisition, and an interactive dashboard-style portal went live in 2025. The image analyses are combined with conventional field sampling.

Restoration progress assessments. Very high-resolution multispectral imagery from aircraft, UAS or satellites is classified into vegetation and substrate maps to plan restoration and track revegetation, as in the monitoring of San Dieguito Lagoon for the California Coastal Commission since 2003.

Natural resource surveys. State and federal agencies use Ocean Imaging's aerial multispectral imaging to assess kelp beds and eelgrass, and the company helps build baseline natural-resource databases for new coastal Marine Protected Areas.

Expert witness testimony. Staff have testified for plaintiffs and defendants in oil-spill, sewage-discharge and water-quality cases, and have supplied data and analyses for environmental damage settlements.