Threat assessment using context-based tracking in a maritime environment
Jemin George, John L. Crassidis, Tarunraj Singh · 2009
Abstract – The main objective of this work is to model and exploit available maritime contextual information to provide a hypothesis on suspicious vessel maneuvers. This concept involves utilizing the L1 tracking to perform L2/L3 data fusion, i.e. refinement and assessment for situations and threats. A new context-based tracker known as the Con-Tracker is developed. The purpose of the ConTracker is to incorporate the contextual information into a traditional α − β tracker in such a way so that it provides a repeller or an attractor characteristics to a specific region of inter-est. Any behavior of the vessel that is inconsistent with the repeller or the attractor characteristics of the current vessel location would be classified as suspicious. Such an incon-sistent vessel behavior would be directly indicated by a high measurement residual which may be used to estimate an accurate process noise covariance using a multiple-model adaptive estimator. Based on the rate of change of the esti-mated process noise covariance values, an L2/L3 hypothe-sis generator red-flags the target vessel. Simulation results indicate that the context based tracking enhances the relia-bility of erratic maneuver detection.