Big Data and Risk Analysis in the field of Safety and Protection of the marine environment

1.  Context, definition of the problem

One of the objectives of the Spanish Maritime Search and Rescue Agency (hereinafter, SASEMAR) is to monitor and support the maritime traffic. For that purpose, there are twenty operational centres that record the transit of ships along the waters in which Spain has sovereignty, sovereign rights or jurisdiction.

The main sources of these records come from the information provided by the radar tracking systems whose antennas are strategically located on earth, and from the ship's transponders (AIS, Automatic Identification System) whose signals are captured by VHF antennas different from the previous ones. These data are stored on the SASEMAR servers, with access under permission.

Centro Jovellanos during the training of Vessel Traffic Services Operators has identified that in certain areas with high maritime traffic density, the large amount of data using traditional methods could be hiding potential risks to consider and be trained.

2.       Challenge definition. Description of need

The challenge is to find a Big Data driven solution aiming at allowing users to acquire a real vision of the latent risks in a specific maritime area monitoring all the available data in the same map.

This solution must show all variables of the maritime traffic, AIS data stored in SASEMAR servers, together with available spatial marine data which traffic is affected directly or indirectly.

The solution must be deployed on a web map server open source and generate traffic lines and densities identified with different colours according to intensity.

The solution will allow users to:

- Filter which type of information to visualize, such as: type of vessel, ranges of courses, intervals of date-time and speeds, draft, etc.

- Deploy collision probability maps and the quantification of risk.

- Deploy stranding probability maps and the quantification of risk.

- Draw over the webmap and export the results as a vector georeferenced layer (geojson, kml, etc)

- Export the graphical results as a jpg image and also georeferenced (.tiff) image.

In order to achieve this goal, a specific time period and/or area should be possible to be selected and data sets of information must be analysed to be part of the result.

The solution developed will focus on a specific area of the Spanish Territorial Waters, but the idea is to apply it in other areas of their territorial waters.

SASEMAR, through its training centre (Centro Jovellanos), will provide the developers with the necessary data and technical criteria within the field of maritime traffic, which allow the development of the expected results to achieve the objectives of the challenge^[1].

3.       Requirements

The solution must fulfil the following technical requirements:

- Consider available spatial marine data which affected directly or indirectly traffic data. In this way, data significant values should be crossed with maritime traffic data to propose the solution.

- Consider available spatial marine data which affected directly or indirectly traffic data. In this way, data significant values should be crossed with maritime traffic data to propose the solution.

- Provide collision and the stranding probability maps, and the representation of maritime traffic density, georeferenced and in a specific time period and area.

- Provide stranding maps according to bathymetry.

- Allow the exportation of results to different georeferenced formats.

- Be capable of importing layers of vector information and also ‘.csv’ tables or similar.

- Include time bar displayed and the possibility of saving the different obtained results.

- Use a base map based on nautical cartography.[2]

- Be accessible for future improvements.

The database will be registered on a server of the Centro Jovellanos.

4.       Expected Outcomes

The proponent will develop a minimum viable product implemented or the proof of concept specifying the elements including all the required elements and functionalities. 

5.       Budget

The solution will have a 15,000€ budget for the development of the system.

Jovellanos Centre will make available the hardware for the implementation of the prototype with their own resources or assuming the purchase of new assets up to 2.500 euros. The proponent will provide full details (brand, model, supplier and cost) of hardware that should be procured for the development of the prototype for the project.