Toward User-Centred Geovisual Analytics in Maritime Surveillance

Within the domain of maritime safety and security, many operators and analysts are asked to manage huge set of real-time data. Information systems, such as Maritime Surveillance Systems, are used to visualize and analyse information of monitored vessels (e.g., AIS, RADAR). Past tracks, present states of vessels and contextual data, such as meteorology, are gathered in these visual platforms. Figure 1 gives an example of a visual platform used in maritime surveillance centres: multiple screens give speci c information, using various displays. These visualizations are the results of the I2C project [3]. Analysis tools are integrated to these systems, and can be based on geographical queries, data comparison, trajectory prediction, etc. These tools enable to detect unusual behaviours at sea, potential risks alerts and suspicious vessels. The work of analysts is thereby improved. Previous research has shown that geovisualization and geovisual analytics improve anomaly detection and make knowledge discovery easier to human operators [1, 7, 8].