Maritime Awareness at Regional and Global Scales

Automatic ship reporting systems (mainly AIS and LRIT) today provide rather complete coverage of all the larger (>300 GT) vessels. Coastal receivers linked in networks (MSSIS, SafeSeaNet, …) and a growing number of space-based receivers provide a global reach. At JRC (the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre) the so-called “Blue Hub” has been set up to continuously ingest data from such systems (via internet), store them in a database, compile ship tracks, predict ship positions to the current time and display the result – the real-time Maritime Situational Picture (MSP) – on a web browser. Historic data, including the collection of stored MSPs (at 15 min interval), are used to derive statistical distributions of ship density, as a function of ship type or ship behaviour (e.g. fishing). Finally, the continuously available MSP based on the ship reporting data is complemented with incidental samplings of non-cooperative ships using satellite SAR images (Cosmo-SkyMed, TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-2). This shows that only about 50 % of the ships detected in satellite SAR images are reporting in AIS or LRIT. The system has been used during 6 months periods over ocean-basin wide areas in the Western Indian Ocean (2011-2012) and off West Africa including the Gulf of Guinea (2012-2013), producing maritime awareness of hitherto unavailable levels.

VAN WIMERSMA GREIDANUS Herman;  ALVAREZ ALVAREZ Marlene;  ERIKSEN Torkild; 

2015-04-09

National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office (NMIO)

JRC90049