Actionable Intelligence
Written by Mark Fitzgerald
CGF 2010 Volume: 2 Issue: 1 (Feb/March)
Effectively understanding and assessing activities in the maritime domain calls for enormous collaboration from joint forces, government agencies, international coalition partners and commercial entities. From the Coast Guard’s point of view, maritime domain awareness (MDA) is key to ensuring nautical and coastal safety, security and mobility. It also serves to enhance national defense capabilities and protect natural resources.
“Having the capacity to know what’s occurring in the maritime domain is a challenging proposition,” said David Belz, a retired Coast Guard Rear Admiral and the vice president for strategic programs for BAE Information Technology. “It’s not unlike if you were to try to monitor everything that’s happening on the highway. On the highway, you don’t know who is who; you don’t know at all. The Coast Guard is trying to do this in the maritime domain—and it’s a very big challenge.”
To advance MDA capacity, the Coast Guard is currently utilizing two means of cooperative identification technologies—the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) system.
The AIS system is a maritime digital communication network that continually transmits and receives vessel data over very-high frequencies (VHF). Operating in the VHF maritime band, the shipboard broadcast system works like a transponder and can display information on other AISequipped vessels.
The LRIT system, which is assigned by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), is able to collect and disseminate vessel position information received from IMO member states’ ships that are subject to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, an international treaty that protects merchant ships. LRIT technology interfaces directly with Global Navigation Satellite System equipment and has internal positioning capacity.
“When you talk about identification systems, clearly you have to identify the vessel and you have to try to differentiate the vessel,” explained Beltz. “You have to distinguish vessel A from vessel B, the good guy from the bad guy, and a good vessel from a bad vessel, keeping in mind that a good vessel could be overtaken by bad guys. This begins to give you a sense of the magnitude of the task.”
SEECOAST 21
About five years ago, BAE Systems received a $3.3 million contract from the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center to build the See- Coast Port and Coastal Scene Awareness Prototype and Demonstration System. The project was part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Automated Scene Understanding program.
In 2007, BAE Systems demonstrated to Coast Guard watchstanders a system called SeeCoast21, which obtains a variety of real-time tracks from AIS and radar sensors as well as real-time video from cameras. The company integrated this automated scene understanding (ASU) product to the CommandBridge user-defined operating picture, which was developed by The Mariner Group.
The SeeCoast21 system utilizes a situational understanding and alerting module that can learn normal vessel activity characterized by factors such as vessel size, unique identification (such as AIS) and time period. Vessel activity is evaluated in real time against observed normalcy models to generate anomaly alerts.
BAE has streamlined its ASU video processing technology to stabilize imaging and filter maritime background distractions such as waves, glare and wakes. Camera calibration together with vessel waterline estimation empowers the system to recount geo-referenced tracks and categorize vessels by size.
MISSION SYSTEMS AND SENSORS
The U.S. Coast Guard’s Ports and Waterways Safety Systems (PAWSS), which were developed and implemented by Lockheed Martin, operate in nine ports, including New York, New Orleans, Valdez (Alaska), Houston and Puget Sound.
“The systems allow the Coast Guard to monitor all the vessels coming in and out of these ports,” explained Todd Labombard, who heads the company’s coastal and border surveillance unit. “The information is used locally within the port to manage traffic, and is also brought up to higher levels within the Coast Guard where it’s merged with other sources of information that the Coast Guard has to create a common operational picture.”
Lockheed’s wide-area vessel surveillance systems facilitate cross-agency information sharing and encourage cooperation among various agencies and authorities, including the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Transportation, as well as port officials, emergency response teams and local law enforcement.
“MDA is not just knowing who’s out there and who’s coming in, but why you should or shouldn’t be interested,” added Labombard. “This is where you get into software technologies that handle automation filtering, risk assessment, data fusion, data sharing and data distribution capabilities. So it’s about taking that information and turning it into something that’s actionable for whatever mission the Coast Guard is pursuing.”
The PAWSS technology includes Vessel Traffic Management Information Systems (VTMIS) that employ Lockheed’s MTM300 software, which offers central command and control, visual and processing capabilities. The software can display vessel tracks from multiple sites and sensors. Radar and camera technology, radio direction finders, transponders and hydrographic and meteorological assets are integrated into the system. Equipped with AIS capacity, the system can identify approaching vessels and store this information in the database.
“With the right kind of search engines and data fusion software, you can put things together and determine that a particular ship is in an area that it usually does not inhabit,” explained Gary Biermann, a manager of business development in Lockheed’s surveillance systems business unit. “Maybe you do some commercial database mining and discover that recently there was an ownership change and the ship changed from a Class One to a Class Three, and its last port of call was in a foreign country and it’s carrying dual use cargo. The Coast Guard puts all the information they’ve gathered from different sources together and determines whether or not a given situation calls for action.”
FIELD OF VIEW
Innovative Signal Analysis (ISA), which provides real-time signal and image processing systems, recently won a small contract from the Coast Guard to install a camera sensor at the Port of Long Beach. ISA’s WAVcam conducts real-time, broad view surveillance, enabling persistent detection over a wide area and thereby facilitating the availability of visual information and actionable intelligence.
“We developed a way to transform signals into light and to process signals using optical techniques,” said ISA Product Development Director Wayne Tibbit. “The idea is to steer what we call the beam of regard of a standard video camera across a very wide angle. We use mirrors in conjunction with the pan tilt function that you might have on a standard camera. The mirrors are very lightweight and work with the camera to offer great precision. When we scan the mirror back from one extreme to another, we’re accurate to within a pixel.”
ISA’s WAVcam collects high resolution imagery over a 90 degree field of view and streamlines real-time updates of the entire image every second. Applications include border and port security, perimeter monitoring, public area surveillance and event observation.
“The problem with a lot of other optical products is that you often only have a soda straw view,” added Tibbit. “Our camera gives you an awareness of the whole domain through a wide field of view.”
With a long, telescopic lens, Tibbit estimated that it is possible to resolve a three inch object from a distance of about six miles. “You could read the numbers on a boat or tell whether the people on board are carrying weapons,” he said. “Imagine having that same level of magnification with a 90 degree wide field of view that is constantly visible. You’re able to track anything moving through that field of view because the change detection feature allows the system to see a moving object against the background.”
SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY
ORBCOMM, which operates a network of low earth orbit satellites that perform machine to machine messaging, is working with the Coast Guard to detect and track vessels transmitting AIS identifications and locations.
“We initially built a satellite for the Coast Guard with AIS technology and then we put this technology on some other satellites that were launched last year,” said CEO Marc Eisenberg. “We are in the process of building our next generation satellites, which will likely launch at the beginning of 2011 and continue through 2013. All of them will be equipped with AIS detection capability.”
ORBCOMM’s satellites are equipped with a VHF and UHF communications for operation in the 137.0-150.05 MHz and 400.075-400.125 MHz bands. The earth-to-space system uplink is managed by an on-board computer that utilizes the company’s Dynamic Channel Activity Assignment System (DCAAS) to continuously scan authorized spectrums, identify frequencies in use by other band users and designate subscriber communication uplink channels. “We have 13 earth stations worldwide,” noted Eisenberg. “As the satellites pass over, they will connect to an earth station, and once the next generation satellites are launched, we’ll have even faster service and, of course, much more capacity.”
Because the DCAAS changes the uplink frequency every 15 seconds, the system can coexist with current users of the VHF frequency band and limit interference to acceptable levels. This simplifies the design, as the gateway earth stations and the subscriber communicators communicate with the satellites in the same VHF band. Consequently, it’s not necessary to have multiple communication equipment on a single satellite.
“We are moving from being able to track ships from a couple satellites when there is a pass, to a much more comprehensive and real-time system,” added Eisenberg. “This kind of speed and efficiency is what our next generation satellites will enable once we get them up and out there. It’s not surprising that our largest end-users are folks like the Coast Guard who are using AIS.” ♦
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