Identification of SAR Detected Targets on Sea in Near Real Time Applications for Maritime Surveillance

Remote sensing technologies are widely used in maritime surveillance applications. Nowadays, spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems provide outstanding capabilities for target detection at sea for large areas independently from the weather conditions. The generated value added target detection product is composed by complementary information from the Automatic Identification System (AIS). Resulting information layers provides a more reliable picture on the maritime situation awareness. This paper describes the approach of SAR-AIS data fusion and its visualization means developed for Near Real Time (NRT) Applications for Maritime Situational Awareness by the Maritime Security Lab at the Ground Station in Neustrelitz, part DLR’s German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD). Presented implementation is based on combination of many open source geospatial libraries and frameworks (e.g., GDAL/OGR, Geoserver, PostgresSQL) and shows their effectiveness in the context of complex automated data processing in the frame of NRT requirements

CASTLE4D: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM BASED ON 3D POINT CLOUDS

[EN] During the past decade, the implementation of 3D visualization and Geographic Information System (GIS) in archaeological research has increased and is now well established. However, the combination of these two factors remains rather complicated when faced with archaeological data. Some of the characteristics of this discipline impose the development of applications that will be able to cope with all of the specificities of archaeological data. Our research aims to create an Archaeological Information System (AIS) that will gather all of the characteristics of an archaeological work. In order to develop such an AIS, our first step was to identify its purposes and consequently, the features that should be available to the users. As it is destined to help with archaeological research, it is therefore of the outmost importance that the particularities of such a study are also taken into account. Moreover, the AIS is intended to incorporate point clouds that serve as a base for the three-dimensional model. These 3D point clouds result from the use of photogrammetry and/or lasergrammetry and, at a later stage, will be inserted into a GIS similar structure. The archaeological data will then be linked to the relevant section of the 3D model. However, these various stages and during the development of the AIS itself, we will encounter a series of issues that require to be addressed in order to produce a working system. This paper aims to identify and define the AIS characteristics as well as the issues and obstacles that we are going to face so that this system becomes a functional tool for archaeological research.Luczfalvy Jancsó, A.; Jonlet, B.; Hallot, P.; Poux, F.; Hoffsummer, P.; Billen, R. (2016). CASTLE4D: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM BASED ON 3D POINT CLOUDS. En 8th International congress on archaeology, computer graphics, cultural heritage and innovation. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 247-253. https://doi.org/10.4995/arqueologica8.2015.4210OCS24725

Google Earth Visualizations: Preview and Delivery of Hydrographic and Other Marine Datasets

Existing hydrographic data analysis and visualization tools are very powerful, but lack easy access to web data management tools. Virtual globe software provides a gateway to a host of important data products in formats usable by specialized tools such as CARIS, Fledermaus, and Arc/Info. With virtual globe interfaces, users see complimentary and consistent geographic representations of available data in an easy-tonavigate format. We present a preview of visualizations that build upon virtual globe software. These examples are viewed in Google Earth, but could also be implemented in a number of alternative programs (e.g. NASA World Wind, Dapple, OSSIM Planet). We have assembled Google Earth visualizations from three datasets to illustrate each of the four primary types of data (handle point, line, area, and time data). The USCG Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE) database of ship incidents illustrates point data. A short sample of the USCG National Automatic Identification System logs (N-AIS) demonstrates rendering of line data. Area data is exemplified in the United Nations Convention f the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) multibeam bathymetry. Point, line and area data are combined to present a preview of S57 chart information. Finally, the MISLE database uses time to show maritime incidents that occurred in US waterways. The visualizations for our initial work were created with hand coding and small scripts. However, tools such as Fledermaus and RockWare have added Google Earth export functionality that makes authoring Google Earth resources easy to construct. For large dataset that require additional processing and analyses, Google Earth visualizations can offer users a range of download formats and suggest what software to use. We believe that this virtual globe-based-approach can make geospatial data sets more widely accessible via the world-wide-web

Penentuan Anomali Aktivitas Kapal Berdasarkan Analisa Data AIS

Upaya memberantas aktivitas ilegal di perairan Indonesia sulit dilakukan dengan hanya mengandalkan patroli laut karena lautan Indonesia sangat luas. Salah satu solusi untuk masalah kemaritiman ini adalah dengan melakukan pemantauan kapal yang beroperasi berdasarkan informasi dari Automatic Identification System (AIS) yang dimiliki oleh setiap kapal yang legal berdasarkan standar internasional. Berdasarkan penelitian yang sudah ada, data yang dikirimkan oleh AIS disimpan ke dalam basis data kemudian ditampilkan visualisasinya kepada pengguna. Diperlukan analisa lebih lanjut dari data yang ada pada basis data beserta visualisasinya untuk membedakan kapal yang beroperasi secara wajar dengan kapal yang terindikasi melakukan pelanggaran. ======================================================================================= The government of Indonesia has been struggling in maintaining its maritime territory. Meanwhile, it is proven to be difficult for the government authorities to rely on sea patrol only. One of the attempts to solve this issue is by supervising every ships which currently doing some activity in Indonesia’s maritime territory based on the information provided by Automatic Identification System (AIS). AIS transmitter is attached to each operating ships based on the regulation of international law. The existing research shows that data from AIS can be stored and presented in a virtual map. However, further researches which involve data analysis from the database and its visualization are necessary in order to sort out the suspected ships violating the law of Indonesia territory among the other normal ships

Electronic Chart of the Future: The Hampton Roads Project

ECDIS is evolving from a two-dimensional static display of chart-related data to a decision support system capable of providing real-time or forecast information. While there may not be consensus on how this will occur, it is clear that to do this, ENC data and the shipboard display environment must incorporate both depth and time in an intuitively understandable way. Currently, we have the ability to conduct high-density hydrographic surveys capable of producing ENCs with decimeter contour intervals or depth areas. Yet, our existing systems and specifications do not provide for a full utilization of this capability. Ideally, a mariner should be able to benefit from detailed hydrographic data, coupled with both forecast and real-time water levels, and presented in a variety of perspectives. With this information mariners will be able to plan and carry out transits with the benefit of precisely determined and easily perceived underkeel, overhead, and lateral clearances. This paper describes a Hampton Roads Demonstration Project to investigate the challenges and opportunities of developing the “Electronic Chart of the Future.” In particular, a three-phase demonstration project is being planned: 1. Compile test datasets from existing and new hydrographic surveys using advanced data processing and compilation procedures developed at the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center (CCOM/JHC); 2. Investigate innovative approaches being developed at the CCOM/JHC to produce an interactive time- and tide-aware navigation display, and to evaluate such a display on commercial and/or government vessels; 3. Integrate real-time/forecast water depth information and port information services transmitted via an AIS communications broadcast

A framework to maximise the communicative power of knowledge visualisations

Knowledge visualisation, in the field of information systems, is both a process and a product, informed by the closely aligned fields of information visualisation and knowledg management. Knowledge visualisation has untapped potential within the purview of knowledge communication. Even so, knowledge visualisations are infrequently deployed due to a lack of evidence-based guidance. To improve this situation, we carried out a systematic literature review to derive a number of “lenses” that can be used to reveal the essential perspectives to feed into the visualisation production process.We propose a conceptual framework which incorporates these lenses to guide producers of knowledge visualisations. This framework uses the different lenses to reveal critical perspectives that need to be considered during the design process. We conclude by demonstrating how this framework could be used to produce an effective knowledge visualisation

EMMIX-uskew: An R Package for Fitting Mixtures of Multivariate Skew t-distributions via the EM Algorithm

This paper describes an algorithm for fitting finite mixtures of unrestricted Multivariate Skew t (FM-uMST) distributions. The package EMMIX-uskew implements a closed-form expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for computing the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of the parameters for the (unrestricted) FM-MST model in R. EMMIX-uskew also supports visualization of fitted contours in two and three dimensions, and random sample generation from a specified FM-uMST distribution. Finite mixtures of skew t-distributions have proven to be useful in modelling heterogeneous data with asymmetric and heavy tail behaviour, for example, datasets from flow cytometry. In recent years, various versions of mixtures with multivariate skew t (MST) distributions have been proposed. However, these models adopted some restricted characterizations of the component MST distributions so that the E-step of the EM algorithm can be evaluated in closed form. This paper focuses on mixtures with unrestricted MST components, and describes an iterative algorithm for the computation of the ML estimates of its model parameters. The usefulness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated in three applications to real data sets. The first example illustrates the use of the main function fmmst in the package by fitting a MST distribution to a bivariate unimodal flow cytometric sample. The second example fits a mixture of MST distributions to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) data, and demonstrate that EMMIX-uskew can provide better clustering results than mixtures with restricted MST components. In the third example, EMMIX-uskew is applied to classify cells in a trivariate flow cytometric dataset. Comparisons with other available methods suggests that the EMMIX-uskew result achieved a lower misclassification rate with respect to the labels given by benchmark gating analysis

The dominant of Bloggers in Malaysian politics through social networks

Every country in this world has own political issues. In Malaysia for example, political issues played an important role that can influence other factors such as social and economy. As we all know, political factor can give positive and negative effect to a situation in Malaysia. The frequent usage of computer nowadays by Malaysian people helps in spreading information and news about political situation in Malaysia through cyberspace. In this paper, we use web mining system with Artificial Immune System (AIS) to regain a small group of relevant websites and webpages on political issues in Malaysia. To analyze the relationship between website and webpages, the concept of social networks will be used. Result from the web mining system with AIS will be used to understand the impact of social network to the political situation in Malaysia

Neuroevolution on the Edge of Chaos

Echo state networks represent a special type of recurrent neural networks. Recent papers stated that the echo state networks maximize their computational performance on the transition between order and chaos, the so-called edge of chaos. This work confirms this statement in a comprehensive set of experiments. Furthermore, the echo state networks are compared to networks evolved via neuroevolution. The evolved networks outperform the echo state networks, however, the evolution consumes significant computational resources. It is demonstrated that echo state networks with local connections combine the best of both worlds, the simplicity of random echo state networks and the performance of evolved networks. Finally, it is shown that evolution tends to stay close to the ordered side of the edge of chaos.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2017 (GECCO '17