Using Apparent Contrast as a Surf Zone Index

摘要

This document gives a logical outline of how the concept of Apparent Contrast can be adapted to serve as a Surf Zone Index (SZI). The resulting SZI may then be used to assess the potential mine detection performance of an arbitrary Electro-Optical Sensor in an arbitrary Surf Zone. This paper is intended to be the first in a series of papers that will get increasingly more sophisticated moving from irradiance (the simplest construct) in this paper to radiance and time-dependent constructs in later reports. This paper sketches the physical processes affecting light propagation in the Surf Zone and then shows how they can be mathematically described and combined into an apparent contrast-based Surf Zone Index. The topics are covered in the following order: 1. A review of Contrast and Contrast Transmittance as used by the old Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Visibility Laboratory per Preisendorfer (1976) 2. Application of this approach to develop a SZI for a passive optical image (as opposed to an active or laser device) detector for the special case of bottom mines in the Surf Zone and how it affects Probability of Detection and False Alarm Rate 3. Some discussion of how this first simple introduction of SZI can be improved.