An automated surface surveillance system

Abstract

This paper describes an automated surface surveillance system, developed on behalf of the Government of Canada to detect and track illegal vessels. The scenario involves a moving target having speed significantly less than the searcher speed, slowly approaching Canada's coastline. The crux of the surveillance problem is to determine the sequence of sub-regions to search in order to maximize the probability of target detection. The complexity of our surveillance problem lies in the absence of knowledge on the target location, speeds and course. Additionally, the searcher is frequently confronted with insufficient time to area search the sub-regions. The presence of false targets and the occurrence of irregular search area further compound the problem. Our decision support system is a combination of established theories on probability maps, barrier patrol and a novel construction of heuristics for area searching irregular regions. Our approach also involves extensive use of visualization tools to aid code debugging and validation. More importantly, our automated surveillance system provides a user-friendly environment for decision planners.