Project: Maritime Millimeter radar sensor NETwork
The proposed project aims to bring a new product to the maritime market place – a sensor surveillance system that can observe the ocean surface at high resolution & thereby greatly reduce numerous maritime risks such as accidental collisions with (small) ships, rouge waves, icebergs, and so forth. Today, these risks can only be avoided to a limited extent, which is especially true for smaller objects as these cannot be detected by conventional RADAR or SONAR. Navigational accidents alone represent 40% of yearly insurance claims and force 1 out of 10 ships (of a total fleet of about 60.000 ships) for an unplanned dry dock every year costing on average €400,000 per incident. The worldwide shipping industry is in a great need for a solution to reduce these risks_x000D__x000D_It is vital for any ship manager to be able to monitor and respond to any major danger. It is an absurd situation in today’s modern technological world that there are non-monitored areas in immediate vicinity of a ship in which the crew cannot possibly survey. Consequently, sea masters do not have sufficient clue of dangers around them. There is no appropriate technical solution to survey potential approaching dangerous objects/targets around a ship, like pirate skiffs, terrorist swimmers or other similar malicious acts of pirates or terrorists. Thus there are several hazards for offshore assets that cannot be properly shielded. Maritime piracy alone costs the global economy between $10-15bn a year. Safety & security of ships & crew are inevitably connected with very large economics & environmental care_x000D__x000D_The technology that can produce the tools to detect & deter navigational hazards & reduce the mentioned risks exists today in the military/defence and space doCOs. The SME company Triad AS (TRI) has recently derived an experimental base technology (a millimeter (MM)-wave high-resolution radar network) that can through this initiative be adapted to become available to the shipping industry. The aim of the participating SMEs -and focus of this project- is to transfer this technology base to the civil/commercial maritime doCO & demonstrate the viability thereof; it is to adapt a multi-mission radar sensor network that will be able to detect, characterise & track objects (even <10 m) up to 1 km ahead of or 360 degrees around a ship (eg. passenger ship, oil/gas production platform, floating production unit, oil/gas transport vessel) or port, enabling surveillance relevant information to be processed in real-time. In effect, this is a 24/7 surveillance system that warns the officer at the bridge (eg. by alarms, warning lights, decision support) of potential safety, security, navigation and/or environmental risks. It is a support to the officer that helps preventing accidents, attacks & damages. It allows the possibility to act instead of react_x000D__x000D_Among the end-user benefits of the proposed system are the ability to observe the immediate vicinity around an offshore assets that (until now) cannot be monitored sufficiently for the aforementioned risks, ie. search & rescue, detecting pirate intruders, environmental/sea state sensing, etc. The shipping market leaders are eager to offer their maritime infrastructures for evaluating & demonstrating this base technology for the above applications in the maritime environment. This in turn can greatly foster the SMEs growth since base technology & market uptake are established_x000D__x000D_The final result will be a demonstrator system installed, tested & demonstrated onboard a ship. Potential customers will be invited onboard to assess the cost-benefit of the system_x000D__x000D_The consortium members are general (TRI) & maritime specific (Global Maritime Services-GMS) radar hardware (HW), software (SW) & algorithm specialists; ship installation/integration & maritime market maker experts (Offshore Monitoring-OSM); industrial development, production & distribution experts (Norbit-NBT). In addition, there are the most important maritime market sector leaders, which all are represented in this project with a representative P (S. Mokster Shipping-SMS) and commitment letters adjoined in an expert group (cf. commitment letters attached hereto); Statoil (a leading oil/gas/energy operator), Det Norske Veritas (a leading institution for maritime certification/risk management), Regatta (leading supplier of life vests/survival equipment to the private maritime market), Viking-Life (leading supplier of survival suits, life rafts/vests for the professional offshore market), Ericsson (a world wide supplier of sensor networks/technology), the Norwegian Technical University (a center for maritime electronics/remote sensing) & NOFO (the NOrwegian clean seas association For Operating companies, a leading player in oil spill response).They will all independently assess & verify that the end product is in line with end-user functional requirements (including regulations) & that the final product is attractive from a cost-benefit point of view
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Acronym
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MM Net
(Reference Number: 7363)
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Duration
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01/09/2012 - 31/08/2014
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Project Topic
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A millimeter-wave radar sensor network for maritime surveillance, safety, and security applications in the 360 degrees region around a ship, offshore installation, or port using innovative, flexible, and low cost solutions to offer great cost/performance over conventional systems.
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Network
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Eurostars
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Call
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Eurostars Cut-Off 8
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Project partner
