StarboardTM Maritime Intelligence, MDA Ltd and Unseenlabs are set to collaborate on a live demonstration of satellite surveillance technology to take place at the Indo Pacific 2022 International Maritime Exposition being held May 10 – 12 in Sydney, Australia.
The operation – dubbed 18c – will focus on uncovering illegal fishing for southern bluefin tuna and will show how technology can help both fisheries and intelligence analysts navigate the increasingly rich and complex data available to them.
“We know intelligence teams are excited about the possibilities of fusing data from multiple space-based sensors and using machine learning to support their work, but it can sometimes be hard to take that step into operationalising these opportunities” says Heather Deacon, Business Development Manager for Starboard.
“We want to give a behind the scenes look into how this can work and to do this operation 18c will include over seven sources of data.”
The live demonstration will cover the planning, tasking and analysis of vessel detections from both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and radio frequency (RF) satellite data. This will be combined with automatic identification system (AIS) data and supplemented with fishing registers, vessel ownership information and environmental data.
“Through this operation with Starboard and MDA, we want to demonstrate the power of multi-data and how merging different data sources actually improves maritime situational awareness in a fast and clear way” says Clément Galic, CEO and Co-founder of Unseenlabs.
“RF data brings a new insight and we’re delighted to make this live demonstration to show the added value that it can bring to public and private actors in the maritime fields.”
MDA’s RADARSAT-2 satellite is the most capable SAR satellite for maritime surveillance in orbit today, providing C-Band radar coverage optimized for maritime surveillance.
RADARSAT-2 provides 20 different imaging beam modes with many beam modes designed specifically for maritime surveillance. These maritime surveillance beam modes are able to cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of the open sea/ocean in a single pass.
Unseenlabs, MDA and Starboard Maritime Intelligence will all be attending the 2022 Indo Pacific Maritime Exposition in Australia.
“We are so pleased to be able to travel outside of New Zealand again and take our product to this international audience,” says Ms Deacon.
The three space-based data technology companies have global experience in fisheries surveillance. Their customers include the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the Pacific Islands Fisheries Forum Agency.
The live demonstration held at the expo will also be available online with daily updates provided on social media. Registrations are open to anyone who is interested in following the progress of operation 18c.
Space data continues to offer opportunities for maritime protection and the market is growing in both analytics maturity and the volume of information – AIS data alone produces around 35 million ship positions each day.
