SPOTLIGHT ON CANADA Maerospace: Accurate, reliable maritime intelligence in real time Maerospace’s Jay Batista discusses how the Ontario-based maritime intelligence company became a global real-time intelligence supplier via industry leading radar systems and innovative data analytics. In 2013, a group of executives instrumental in the design and deployment of a satellite constellation for the collection of global maritime AIS location data became concerned with the reliability of the data. The issue was that any satellite overhead captured only 60 percent of the AIS transmissions from the vessels below and in subsequent passages overhead another 60 percent, but not necessarily the same ships as the previous pass. The satellite AIS data became less reliable because locations were not synchronised in time. Adding a dead reckoning prediction to the data did not solve the problem That executive team founded Maerospace and focused on the accuracy and reliability of maritime intelligence. Our first product to market was the TimeCaster data analytics product, which is now in its 4th generation of design. This product allows us to improve the global accuracy of ship
12
positions from greater than 120 nautical miles to within 4 nautical miles, in addition to that we have the ability to find ships that have turned off their MMSI transmitters or that have used a second transmitter on the same identical MMSI in order to spoof the location.
Building on this initial product, Maerospace has built up a development expertise in the areas of data analytics, pattern discovery and recognition, artificial intelligence and machine learning, multi-format data fusion and integration. In the last three years, we’ve added radar technology (High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR)), including licensing technology from Raytheon and over 30 patents, and hiring a staff with a combined expertise of over 100 years, including leading IEE recognised innovations. In the last few months, we’ve added an antenna division, which allows us to continue our radar technology support. At Maerospace, we have been developing tools that marry our pattern recognition skills to multi-source integration providing multi-domain awareness in a single display. For example, we have proven that using satellite imagery to recognise vessels and label them with AIS data can Line of Defence
