DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR RISK ASSESSMENT IN THE MARITIME DOMAIN

In the last decade, the experts’ need for enhancing situation awareness systems has increased in the maritime surveillance domain all over the world. This leads, therefore, to enhancing decision making and maintaining safety and security of shores. The reason for this is the sudden increase in the rate of maritime smuggling in all its sorts (people, goods, drug, weapons, etc.), the use of sea for terroristic and other illegal activities, and the increase of ship accidents that yields catastrophic results.Maritime environment is characterized to be dynamic, complex and having excess information coming from heterogeneous data sources. Some of these data sources monitor vessel motion (like radars, cameras, AIS and GPS devices that determine position, velocity, and course) and measure environmental factors (like whether, wave height, wind speed, and visibility conditions). Other information available includes port reports about vessels (like vessel lists or crews that have history of illegal business). For this reason, building situation awareness for this environment requires the domain operators to have the experience and awareness of all aspects of this environment and its parameters. Having this expertise, they assess vessel risks in short time. This can put them under mental pressure that may distort the whole situation awareness process and leads them to lose control putting them and maritime safety and security under real threats. Hence, risk assessment and identifying threats and suspicious behaviors of vessels are the main key to avoid those risks before they occur or, at least, mitigate their impacts [1].