PASSAGES - a system for improved safety and security of maritime operations in arctic areas

This paper presents an overview of the Canadian-German research project PASSAGES (Protection and Advanced Surveillance System for the Arctic: Green, Efficient, Secure)2 on an advanced surveillance system for safety and security of maritime operations in Arctic areas. As a consequence of the climate change, Arctic waters are without ice coverage for increasingly longer periods. This allows more maritime operations in the vast, remote and practically not surveilled and controlled Arctic area. The majority of activities expected in the Arctic will take place within the territorial waters and exclusive economic zones of the eight Arctic states, thus affecting the legal and security interests. To ensure border security and to detect and prevent illegal activities, it will be necessary to develop a surveillance and reconnaissance system that brings together all related means, assets, organizations, processes and structures to build one homogeneous and integrated system. Harsh arctic conditions require a new surveillance concept that fuses heterogeneous sensor data, contextual information, and available pre-processed surveillance data, and combines all components to efficiently extract and provide the maximum available amount of information. The fusion of all these heterogeneous data and information will provide improved and comprehensive situation awareness for decision support of different stakeholder groups such as governmental authorities, commercial users and Northern communities.