Monitoring maritime activities in remote waters

During the first decades of the 21st century miniaturization of electronics and hardware has reduced the cost of developing and building satellites. Affordable launch opportunities arise from flying a small standard size satellite as a secondary payload on a rocket where the orbit is determined by a paying customer. Together these developments have enabled more nations to develop and utilize satellite technology.
Can these satellites support the situational awareness and safety requirements of authorities and ship owners in remote waters?
A satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) flies at 25 times the speed of sound. It uses approximately 100 minutes to orbit the Earth once. From a vantage point of several hundred kilometres above the Earth, these satellites can observe a huge area in a short time. However, due to their high speed they are only present for minutes or seconds. Satellite observations are useful over the polar areas and the oceans where there is little infrastructure available.
The 21^st century has also seen efforts to increase safety at sea. The Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides situational awareness about vessels that can be seen from the ship bridge. AIS transponders transmit position, identification data, timing information, speed, course and other relevant pieces of information about a vessel, other ships, and coastal authorities within line of sight. The flag state can be identified from the information in the AIS messages. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted a regulation that requires AIS to be fitted on all ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not engaged on international voyages and all passenger ships irrespective of size. The requirement became effective for all ships by 31 December 2004. IMO’s International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters (Polar Code) covers for example; equipment, training, communications, tele medicine and Search And Rescue (SAR) relevant to ships operating in polar waters. It entered into force on 1 January 2017. Compliance with the Polar Code requires access to updated information about the environment where the vessel is located. This requires communications and potentially high bandwidth. Such means are available in the waters surrounding Antarctica and the southern part of the Arctic Ocean where services from communication satellites in Geostationary Orbits (GEO) are available. Such satellites fall below the horizon at 81.3° latitude. Above this latitude other means of communications are required to meet the requirements of the Polar Code.
AIS transmissions in the VHF band can be received by satellites in LEO. Norway launched its first satellite with an AIS receiver in July 2010. The prime mission of AISSat-1 was to monitor maritime activities in the North Atlantic and Barents Sea. It has been joined by four more satellites that now provide global AIS coverage.
In this work it is shown how small, affordable satellites can support SAR operations and create situational awareness in polar areas. AIS makes it possible to build temporal and spatial profiles of the fleet sailing in remote waters. Situational awareness means that relevant authorities and ship owners know where vessels are in an area. AIS data received by satellites is used to study maritime activities in the Arctic and Antarctica by recreating vessel voyages with high accuracy. By mapping the voyages of individual tourist vessels, the satellite data has shown how the tourist industry changes with time. As such, it can independently verify other sources of information like landing reports. This enhances safety by reducing response times in emergencies.
New opportunities arise when AIS data is combined with data from other space sensors. For example, radar images of sea ice enable SAR coordination centres to determine which vessel is best suited to support a vessel in distress. The one closest to a disabled ship may have to force itself through thick sea ice to reach the vessel experiencing problems. More distant vessels may be more helpful if an easier route of open channels through the ice can be found using images from radar satellites.
Creating accurate profiles of polar fleets from the combination of AIS and other tools increases situational awareness. This concept can also be used to build a database of spatial and temporal maritime use for other purposes including fisheries enforcement.
This work demonstrates how tele medicine requirements, set by the Polar Code can be met using the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation and affordable commercial off the shelf medical equipment already in use by first responders. These satellites in LEO, provide coverage in polar areas where services from geostationary communication satellites are not available.
AIS data can also be used to monitor the voyages of private yachts and other vessels that are not obliged to report their activities. This work shows that private vessels sail to both the Arctic and Antarctica and reveals fine-grained data about the complete human footprint from vessels in the region. Satellite-based AIS is also used to monitor fishing vessels and fish carriers and identify places where they meet. It is likely that transfer of catch takes place at these locations. Vessels that do not shine their AIS transponder are detectable in radar images as bright echoes. By monitoring how long the vessels are next to each other, and estimating the transfer rate from a fishing vessel, it is possible to estimate the volume of the catch being transferred. This information can be used to support the work of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to estimate the volumes and combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. As technology has advanced, regulation and governance have lagged – this is now an area in need of further work.
These developments in technology during the first decades of the 21st century took place against the backdrop of environmental and geopolitical change. Man-made climate change resulting from the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere heats the planet. This is evident in the polar areas as ice and snow melt at an increasing rate. Destinations and resources that used to be inaccessible due to snow and ice are now available for tourism and harvesting. The receding sea ice is expected to open a new sea route across the North Pole in the middle of this century. Russia’s Northern Sea Route and the North West Passage through the waters of Canada and the United States are expected to be available for longer periods of the year. Commercial companies are positioning themselves to explore new opportunities in the Arctic. The situation is different in Antarctica. The Protocol on Environmental Protection (The Madrid Protocol) bans mining in Antarctica indefinitely. There will hence be no legal export of mineral resources out of Antarctica. Satellites will guide, observe and observe vessels in the Arctic, and verify that there is no mining in Antarctica. Satellites in low Earth orbit will provide important transparency and situational awareness in the polar areas in the future.
At the beginning of this century the world was unipolar with the United States as hegemon. Two decades later and we live in a multipolar world. Here we see Arctic nations using international law to extend their sea territories. As well as rising non-Arctic nations planning to use mechanisms available through international law to get access to Arctic resources to develop their economies and improve the living standard of their citizens. This will result in increased traffic in existing and new sea routes in the Arctic. The first decade of the 21st century saw a spirit of cooperation in the polar areas. In 2010 Norway and the Russian Federation agreed upon their sea border in the Arctic Ocean after more than 40 years of negotiations. In addition, conflicts in other parts of the world have spilled over to the polar areas. After Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014, the spirit of cooperation and diplomacy between Russia and the West significantly deteriorated. The Arctic Council has paused all official meetings of the Council and its subsidiary bodies until further notice after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Finland and Sweden have applied for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In April 2023 Finland became a member of NATO. Sweden’s membership has been approved, and once accession is complete the Arctic Council will consist of seven NATO members and Russia. The future will show if Russia is interested in participating in an organization where it is outnumbered by NATO members.
In this context it is more important than ever to have a clear picture of all human activities in the polar regions. This applies both to governments and commercial actors. Satellites provide situational awareness and transparency for both NATO, allied nations, and the Russian Federation, as well as more distant actors like China. Satellites allow us to verify that vessels follow international regulations. Shipping companies can use data from small satellites in polar orbit to monitor the movements of their vessels. Insurance companies will likely use the same data to recreate the voyage of a vessel that experiences failures or delays. It is likely we will see the development of applications that allow customers to follow a parcel that they bought from a vendor on another continent. As the work in the thesis will discuss, these satellites will support both SAR and tele medicine. Saving lives and vessels will become still more important in the polar areas.