Surveillance system for EU marine infrastructure
Nowadays, piracy incidents at sea are alarmingly increasing worldwide. State-of-the-art on-board observation technologies are not able to accurately assess a security threat. For example, an object approaching a ship cannot be automatically detected, characterised and tracked to determine whether it is a potential intruder or a friendly small vessel. The EU-funded project 'Security system for maritime infrastructures, ports and coastal zones' (SECTRONIC) aims to design an effective early warning system to minimise risks associated with acts of piracy and terrorism. This will help better protect maritime infrastructures such as ports, passenger transport and energy supply. For better spatial imaging, the system will combine various observation technologies. These include radar, sonar and Earth observation (EO) satellite systems. This early warning system will accurately and automatically observe, characterise and track objects of significance in a 360-degree radius around the marine infrastructure. It will be applicable above and below the water surface, 24 hours a day and in all weather conditions by means of short-range (sonars, radars, infrared cameras) and long-range equipment (EO satellites, coast stations). The focus is on providing a system that does not require continuous human operation and has an intuitive, user-friendly human interface. The system should also reliably raise alarms in identified situations. To assess its effectiveness, a number of user-defined scenarios were considered. SECTRONIC systems were successfully installed in ports for a one-year operational evaluation period. Project partners developed and optimised metocean models and algorithms. To validate the recommended algorithms, five parameters for wind, current, temperature, ice concentration and ice drift on sea surface were considered. Furthermore, a quantitative vulnerability reduction metric was developed for assessing the benefit of using non-lethal response technologies. This metric was applied to a single device as well as a combination of devices in the SECTRONIC scenarios. Future work includes further optimisation of the false alarm rate and night vision capability. To further enhance operators' decision making, the system should be integrated with appropriately scaled electronic chart display and information systems.
Keywords
Marine infrastructure, early warning system, radar, sonar, Earth observation, satellite, security threat
