Grant: Engage Grants Program

MDA Systems Ltd. (MDA) is a global leader in communications technology and a pioneer of the Canadian geospatial industry. Satellite-based data are now able to describe the location of all ships at sea in near-real time. As such, MDA is developing enhanced maritime surveillance capacity to support detection of nefarious maritime activities such as illegal fishing, piracy, and pollution. True operational surveillance of the maritime environment requires more information than just ship location, such as information about maritime companies, port records, weather, vessel characteristics and environmental data. Our goal is to develop a methodology for incorporating ad-hoc geospatial information into MDA's existing and evolving maritime domain awareness system. To meet this goal, we will 1) develop a database of relevant information sources based on the initial list of web sources, 2) extract geographic and attribute information from these sources and fuse this information with ship location data, 3) develop an integration and ranking framework to support evaluation of the value of new information sources and 4) provide mapped model outputs and a web-based map interface for exploring spatially integrated maritime surveillance data.