Integrating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles into surveillance systems in complex maritime environments
Author
Dimitriou, Georgios
Date
2013-09Advisor
Kennedy, Quinn
Second Reader
Lucas, Thomas W.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
One of the most important missions all Navies have is to constantly and sufficiently monitor their area of responsibility. This task becomes more challenging when a surveillance system operates in a complex environment with high traffic of merchant and fishing vessels and the existence of many islands. Potential tactics that targets might use increase the difficulty of this task. Integrating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into a surveillance system that consists of ground radars and surface ships might enhance the systems capabilities and mitigate its vulnerabilities. In this study, the extremely complex maritime environment of the Aegean Sea is modeled in the Map Aware Non Uniform Automata (MANA) agent-based simulation environment to explore the effectiveness of UAVs in those conditions. The results from almost 100,000 simulated Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance missions are analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, stepwise regression, and partition trees. It was found that by integrating one or two UAVs into a traditional surveillance system, it becomes more efficient in the detection and persistent surveillance of enemies and neutral targets. The most important factors that affect the surveillance systems performance are the detection capabilities of its sensors, the communication accuracy, and the enemys counter-detection capability. Thus, Greece and other countries with similar geographical characteristics should deploy UAVs in a maritime surveillance role.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Defining conditions for the use of persistent surveillance
Fekkes, Cristina Cameron. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2009-12);Experimentation Directorate (J9) attempts to alleviate this shortfall by proposing a definition: "Persistent Surveillance: an operationally focused surveillance approach that uses a full range of strategic, operational and ... -
U.S. biodefense and homeland security toward detection and attribution
Bernett, Brian C. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2006-12);American leaders face tough decisions about the role of biodefense in homeland security. Debate centers on U.S. preparedness for biological attack, but few if any have adequately defined "preparedness." This thesis defines ... -
Surveillance Techniques for the Vessel Traffic Service Systems of the U.S. Coast Guard
Harrington, John E. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 1990-06);The U.S. Coast Guard operates several Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) in major U.S. shipping ports. These systems were designed and implemented twenty years ago. They were designed for a single mission, port safety. The ...