Operations
Cruise ships use a combination of radar, sonar, satellite technology and human observation to guide detection.
Having been awarded a £300,000 grant by the
UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for commercialisation, he and researcher Dr Sonny Bailey are progressing towards a commercially viable product.
The system was originally developed – and recorded in a paper Stott authored in 2019 – to characterise galaxy clusters in large images of the sky. These large structures can be difficult to identify, much like icebergs.
“Broadly, icebergs are pieces of ice in the sea that have broken away from a glacier and sea ice is thick ice that has formed in situ. Ice that formed during the previous winter is of the greatest concern to shipping.”
This new iteration aims to improve detection for all impacted maritime operators. “We looked to apply our technique to areas beyond astrophysics and the vision for this project is to further develop our automated iceberg and sea ice detection system, such that it can be used as a commercial product,” explains Stott.
“The project uses region-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to find icebergs and sea ice in satellite radar imaging, in order to improve maritime safety.”
CNNs are a type of deep learning model that analyse visual data and identify patterns by learning spatial hierarchies. Even if there is ice or cloud cover, their pattern detection ability is not impaired whereas SAR images are affected by low lighting or atmospheric interference. Stott explains that the system takes a large area of SAR ocean images from satellites and then identifies icebergs and sea ice in any cloud condition with a 94% success rate. “But when we move to bigger images covering
20
large areas of the Arctic, we get around 80% accuracy, so there is a trade-off there, depending on speed and what a potential customer would want,” he adds. “However, this is still highly competitive.”
Improving ROI and reputation In a bid to improve upon results from modern radar technology, the team is committed to reducing the two or three shipping incidents involving icebergs each year in the Northern Hemisphere and the ensuing costs from, among other things, diversionary routes, vessel repair and false radar alarms. “Broadly, icebergs are pieces of ice in the sea that have broken away from a glacier and sea ice is thick ice that has formed in situ,” Stott says. “Ice that formed during the previous winter is of the greatest concern to shipping.”
The iceberg detection system has a variety of use cases across the industry’s sectors. For ice-charting organisations that tend to use low-frequency radar images, Stott’s solution would improve results by operating at a finer spatial resolution. Contingency and mitigating environmental risks from marine LNG or oil transportation are among the most useful applications for the oil and gas industry. For fishing, the method could reduce the costs of ship damage and improve ROI. Riding the expedition wave could help expedition cruise companies to further leverage passenger enthusiasm for expedition cruising offering improved detection systems and greater safety while mitigating reputational risks. The next steps involve live testing, which will allow the team to compare algorithm predictions to the conditions seen by the ship at the same time. “For now, the aim is to send the locations of these potential hazards to clients within the UK and global maritime industry,” said Stott, “including merchant shipping, fishing, tourist vessels and shipping insurers.” ●
World Cruise Industry Review /
www.worldcruiseindustryreview.com
Nicola Pulham/
Shutterstock.com
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