Maritime Security, Anomaly Detection and Predictive Movement

Individual shipping routes moving along the West coast of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, along the rivers of North America, and all along the Atlantic coast and Caribbean. The more traffic using a same route, the brighter it appears. Physical geography is revealed in the negative space where maritime shipping does not go.

The maritime domain is awash with data vital to national security. Geotemporal ship movement visualization unlocks patterns of life that aid characterization of unusual events. Combined with predictive analytics, our tile-based visual analytics approach enhances human cognition to find anomalies. Overlooked behavior such as an unlikely meeting of fishing boats outside commercial zones could signal covert trafficking operations. For bulk carriers and tankers, a deviation in course from heavily traveled routes can signal a change in destination, which may be a leading indicator of inventory constraints or price movement in global commodities.