TOOCAN is a cloud tracking algorithm, described in Fiolleau and Roca 2013, to detect and track Deep Convective Systems (DCSs) from the geostationary infrared observations.

The tracking algorithm works in a volume of infrared images to identify and track individual Deep Convective Systems (DCS) not any more with the traditional detection and tracking steps but in a single 3D (spatial+time) segmentation step. That’s way the TOOCAN methodology is based on an iterative process of detection and spread of the convective seeds in order to associate the convective cores to their associated anvil cloud in the 3-dimensional domain.

The high cold shield defined by a 235K threshold can be decomposed in several deep convective systems in the spatio-temporal domain.

The toocan algorithm has then been applied to the GEOgrid_colcloud dataset, and about 15×10⁶ MCSs have been identified over the entire tropics for the 9-year period allowing the documentation of their morphological characteristics along their life cycles.
As a result of this processing, two DCS databases have been built:

• a level-2 database called TOOCAN database
• a level-3 database called CACATOES database, and derived from the TOOCAN database