Improving Maritime Situational Awareness by Fusing Sensor Information and Intelligence A.C. van den Broek, R.M. Neef, P. Hanckmann, S.P. van Gosliga, D. van Halsema TNO The Hague, The Netherlands bert.vandenbroek@tno.nl Abstract - In present-day military security operations threats are more difficult to reveal than in conventional warfare theatres, since they take place during the course of normal life. These maritime missions often take place in littoral environments, where acts of piracy, drug trafficking and other threatening events become obscured in the crowd of everyday fisheries, cargo traders, ferries and pleasure cruises, hindering situation awareness. We aim to improve situation awareness and threat detection capabilities in maritime scenarios by combining sensor-based information with context information and intelligence from various sources. The fusion and analysis in order to reveal suspect from normal behavior is based on domain ontologies. A test bed allows the study of various exploitation and assessments techniques applied to these domain ontologies. Using an appropriate scenario we have simulated suspect and normal behaviour to test the applicability of the various techniques. Keywords: Situation awareness, Intelligence, Sensors, Threat assessment, Decision support. 1 Introduction Because of global economic and socio-political changes, an increase of conflicts near the world's coastlines is anticipated. The littoral zone is characterized by intense regular vessel traffic. The conduct of Maritime Security Operations and Peace support Operations means that navies have to control instead of dominate the sea, thus allowing regular vessel traffic in the area of operations, and act against irregular adversaries who nevertheless also can possess military armaments. In this combined military/non-military setting of operations, naval forces have to protect themselves against threats from land, air and sea, while they continuously have to collect various data to ensure information superiority over their adversaries and thirds. For the purpose to achieve information superiority a research program at TNO, the Netherlands, has started aiming at improving maritime situation awareness. The study for this improvement focuses on the combined use of intelligence sources and sensor information. In this paper we first discuss the operational context and tasks, and define the information requirements. Next, we describe the fusion process, before we elaborate on fusion methods which can be applied. Finally we discuss a system architecture and simulation environment for testing the proposed methods and give conclusions. 2 Operational context Security operations are often characterized by controlling large areas with a limited number of assets. An example is the anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden where the operational area extends over thousands of sea miles. One of the main operational tasks is to direct assets timely to the right position. For the command and control process a common operational picture (COP) is the basis on which decisions and actions are taken. Ideally the COP contains up to date information about the position of own, enemy and third entities combined with their missions, intentions, and capabilities. A core part of the COP is therefore a maritime picture that contains information about ship movements in the complex and detailed coastal environment and information about hostile intent and illegal activity of the ships. In present-day military security operations such threats are more difficult to reveal than in conventional warfare theatres, since they take place during the course of normal life. For example, during maritime missions in littoral environments, acts of piracy, drug trafficking and other threatening events become obscured in the crowd of everyday fisheries, cargo traders, ferries and pleasure cruises. The hostile intent of objects is therefore not always easy to determine because of its ability to cloak and hide among abovementioned regular vessel traffic. To enable threat recognition appropriate situational awareness is needed which implies recognition of the objects present in the scene, their interaction with the environment and their intention on basis of threat hypotheses in order to foresee the situation in the near future. In this way hostile intentions and threats should be recognized in time so that timely decisions and counter actions can be taken. In other words the COP should contain sufficient actionable information to be retrieved on demand. To achieve situation awareness in a wide area,