Enforcement Guide: Near Shore Artisanal Fisheries

We need healthy oceans to support our way of life. Unfortunately, fish stocks are under growing pressure and the need to find innovative and pragmatic resource management strategies is more important than ever. Disregard for fisheries and environmental laws is common and if we are to succeed in reversing the declining trend, we must draft relevant regulations, design and fund comprehensive enforcement programs and cultivate a culture of compliance. Historically, marine law enforcement has been the competency of Naval and Coast Guard authorities; however, many fishery and park agencies, who lack training, equipment, and at times controlling legal authority, are tasked with fisheries management and enforcement. Complicating matters, most agencies are understaffed; lack budgetary resources, and possess limited authority (i.e. power of arrest and the ability to use force). WildAid in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy developed this guide to assist managers in designing a cost effective enforcement strategy for near shore artisanal fisheries. This document is not a recompilation of literature, but a practical guide based on our experience in the Eastern and Western Pacific. Generally, an enforcement system is designed to monitor all activities within a given area ranging from tourism, investigation, and transportation to fisheries; however, this guide will focus primarily on near shore artisanal fisheries. The objectives of this guide are three-fold:1. Examine all factors considered for the design and operation of a marine law enforcement system; 2. Illustrate key components of an enforcement system and evaluate surveillance technology and patrol equipment options; 3. Guide managers in the design and implementation of an enforcement system.In summary, it aims to equip managers with the tools needed to strengthen fisheries management and design enforcement systems that are practical, affordable and feasible to implement in a timely manner. Fisheries enforcement requires a holistic approach that accounts for surveillance, interdiction, systematic training, education and outreach and lastly, meaningful sanctions. Although it explores many surveillance technologies and management tools, this guide more importantly provides a blueprint for the capacity building and professionalization of enforcement officers, who truly are the core component of any fisheries enforcement program

Intelligent deployment strategies for passive underwater sensor networks

Passive underwater sensor networks are often used to monitor a general area of the ocean, a port or military installation, or to detect underwater vehicles near a high value unit at sea, such as a fuel ship or aircraft carrier. Deploying an underwater sensor network across a large area of interest (AOI), for military surveillance purposes, is a significant challenge due to the inherent difficulties posed by the underwater channel in terms of sensing and communications between sensors. Moreover, monetary constraints, arising from the high cost of these sensors and their deployment, limit the number of available sensors. As a result, sensor deployment must be done as efficiently as possible. The objective of this work is to develop a deployment strategy for passive underwater sensors in an area clearance scenario, where there is no apparent target for an adversary to gravitate towards, such as a ship or a port, while considering all factors pertinent to underwater sensor deployment. These factors include sensing range, communications range, monetary costs, link redundancy, range dependence, and probabilistic visitation. A complete treatment of the underwater sensor deployment problem is presented in this work from determining the purpose of the sensor field to physically deploying the sensors. Assuming a field designer is given a suboptimal number of sensors, they must be methodically allocated across an AOI. The Game Theory Field Design (GTFD) model, proposed in this work, is able to accomplish this task by evaluating the acoustic characteristics across the AOI and allocating sensors accordingly. Since GTFD considers only circular sensing coverage regions, an extension is proposed to consider irregularly shaped regions. Sensor deployment locations are planned using a proposed evolutionary approach, called the Underwater Sensor Deployment Evolutionary Algorithm, which utilizes two suitable network topologies, mesh and cluster. The effects of these topologies, and a sensor\u27s communications range, on the sensing capabilities of a sensor field, are also investigated. Lastly, the impact of deployment imprecision on the connectivity of an underwater sensor field, using a mesh topology, is analyzed, for cases where sensor locations after deployment do not exactly coincide with planned sensor locations

FollowMe: Efficient Online Min-Cost Flow Tracking with Bounded Memory and Computation

One of the most popular approaches to multi-target tracking is tracking-by-detection. Current min-cost flow algorithms which solve the data association problem optimally have three main drawbacks: they are computationally expensive, they assume that the whole video is given as a batch, and they scale badly in memory and computation with the length of the video sequence. In this paper, we address each of these issues, resulting in a computationally and memory-bounded solution. First, we introduce a dynamic version of the successive shortest-path algorithm which solves the data association problem optimally while reusing computation, resulting in significantly faster inference than standard solvers. Second, we address the optimal solution to the data association problem when dealing with an incoming stream of data (i.e., online setting). Finally, we present our main contribution which is an approximate online solution with bounded memory and computation which is capable of handling videos of arbitrarily length while performing tracking in real time. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms on the KITTI and PETS2009 benchmarks and show state-of-the-art performance, while being significantly faster than existing solvers

Wide-Area Surveillance System using a UAV Helicopter Interceptor and Sensor Placement Planning Techniques

This project proposes and describes the implementation of a wide-area surveillance system comprised of a sensor/interceptor placement planning and an interceptor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) helicopter. Given the 2-D layout of an area, the planning system optimally places perimeter cameras based on maximum coverage and minimal cost. Part of this planning system includes the MATLAB implementation of Erdem and Sclaroff’s Radial Sweep algorithm for visibility polygon generation. Additionally, 2-D camera modeling is proposed for both fixed and PTZ cases. Finally, the interceptor is also placed to minimize shortest-path flight time to any point on the perimeter during a detection event. Secondly, a basic flight control system for the UAV helicopter is designed and implemented. The flight control system’s primary goal is to hover the helicopter in place when a human operator holds an automatic-flight switch. This system represents the first step in a complete waypoint-navigation flight control system. The flight control system is based on an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. This system is implemented using a general-purpose personal computer (GPPC) running Windows XP and other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. This setup differs from other helicopter control systems which typically use custom embedded solutions or micro-controllers. Experiments demonstrate the sensor placement planning achieving \u3e90% coverage at optimized-cost for several typical areas given multiple camera types and parameters. Furthermore, the helicopter flight control system experiments achieve hovering success over short flight periods. However, the final conclusion is that the COTS IMU is insufficient for high-speed, high-frequency applications such as a helicopter control system

PASD1: a promising target for the immunotherapy of haematological malignancies

In general, there is a lack of good immunotherapy targets within the spectrum of haematological malignancies. However haematopoietic stem cell transplants and continuing antigen discovery have allowed further insight into how further improvements in outcomes for patients might be achieved. Most patients with haematological malignancies can be treated with conventional therapies such as radio- and chemotherapy and will attain first remission. However the removal of residual diseased cells is essential to prevent relapse and its associated high mortality. PASD1 is one of the most tissue restricted cancer-testis (CT) antigens with expression limited to primary spermatagonia in healthy tissue. However, characterisation of PASD1 expression in cancers has been predominantly focussed on haematological malignancies where the inappropriate expression of PASD1 was first identified. PASD1 has one of the highest frequencies of expression of all CT antigens in acute myeloid leukaemia, with some suggestion of its role as a biomarker in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Here we describe the characterisation of the function and expression patterns of PASD1 in cell lines and primary tissues. Development of DNA vaccines targeting PASD1 epitopes demonstrate effective ex vivo T-cell responses in terms of IFNγ secretion and tumour cell killing. Of particular note these vaccines have led to the destruction of cells which process and present endogenous PASD1 indicating that effectively primed CTLs could kill PASD1-positive tumour cells

Technology challenges of stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicles

The ever-changing battlefield environment, as well as the emergence of global command and control architectures currently used by armed forces around the globe, requires the use of robust and adaptive technologies integrated into a reliable platform. Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) aim to integrate such advanced technologies while also increasing the tactical capabilities of combat aircraft. This paper provides a summary of the technical and operational design challenges specific to UCAVs, focusing on high-performance, and stealth designs. After a brief historical overview, the main technology demonstrator programmes currently under development are presented. The key technologies affecting UCAV design are identified and discussed. Finally, this paper briefly presents the main issues related to airworthiness, navigation, and ethical concerns behind UAV/UCAV operations