Surveillance Technologies News

Conventional surveillance technologies cannot easily help to detect fast boats, which generally have small radar signatures and do not carry automatic identification systems (AIS). For this reason, the NATO STO CMRE (Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation) has addressed this problem along with other project partners, as part of the European project PERSEUS. The PERSEUS project (Protection of European BoRders and Seas through the IntElligent Use of Surveillance), coordinated by Spanish technological company Indra…

Port security has too often lagged behind the demands of ever more vulnerable facilities with new technology often being deployed as an after-market add-on, rather than a homogenous part of the port’s day to day working. With new ports being developed on green or brown-field sites across the globe, it is now possible to design-in security from the planning stage. Dr. Mark Yong, Business Development Director for BMT, outlines the scale of the challenge and explains how port planners can help operational security. With the threat of international terrorism looming, port security remains of paramount importance, not only due to the direct threats to life and property, but for the potential economic damage that can arise from effects on supply chains.

Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) have deployed the buoy 35 miles off the coast and in 43 meters of water depth, to perform in-ocean tests on its proprietary APB to further validate the technology's capacity for expanded ocean surveillance. This latest deployment is in connection with a previously-announced Cooperative Research and Development Agreement ("CRADA") with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Science & Technology Directorate ("S&T"). The DHS S&T Borders and…

ObjectVideo won a $750,000 award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II program to continue to research and develop night vision video surveillance technologies. “This second award from DARPA is a terrific validation of the expertise of our scientists as well as critical to helping us continue to develop cutting-edge security technologies absolutely necessary to defending our homeland,” said Alan Lipton, chief technology officer of ObjectVideo. ObjectVideo’s patented intelligent video surveillance software, based on artificial intelligence called "computer vision," runs all objects in a camera's view against threat-specific pre-programmed rules.

At the Communications & IT in Shipping (CITIS) conference at Inmarsat’s Headquarters in London, Telaurus Communications emphasized the importance of communication in the recently passed ISPS Code to a group of delegates largely unaware of its ramifications. A survey of the group showed that 78 percent of those attending knew little of the implications of the legislation. With the compliance date just 16 months away the conference was left in no doubt regarding the urgency of the issues. The Telaurus presentation identified five aspects of the legislation where communication was vital to its implementation and effectiveness. Those areas were Crew Calling, Security Planning, Training, AIS & other surveillance technologies and Crisis and Emergency Response.