INTERNATIONAL CRIME: Got Pirates? No Problem

High Tech Response

Two of the U.S. Navy’s top research labs are teaming with scientists in Chile to develop widget – or web-based applications – to help police the world’s oceans and combat piracy.

U.S. Coast Guard and Navy personnel inspect a suspected pirate skiff in the Gulf of Aden in May 2010 as part of multinational counter piracy task force. (Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ja’lon A. Rhinehart)

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific have formed a research alliance – the International Collaborative Development for Enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness – to build the widgets that will analyze data and other information for sailors and maritime interests to combat pirates, drug smugglers, arms traffickers and other criminals on the high seas.

ONR will be working with researchers at the Technical University Federico Santa Maria, a top engineering school in Chile, to create web-based tools in an open source environment. The focus will be on software to improve automation, small-target detection and intent detection.

Ultimately, the software will be compatible with multiple maritime network systems so that navies around the world can use the tools and share information. John Stasny, an engineer in SPAWAR’s advanced systems analysis systems branch at Systems Center Pacific, says the plan calls for integrating the software tools into a widget framework accessible to coalition partners at a web portal.

The project with Chile is part of a larger collaboration that includes researchers at the University of Ghana, the University of Pretoria, the University of Mauritius and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa.

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