Big Data Used in Sea Crime Prediction

Researchers at Oregon State University are making use of artificial intelligence and big data to generate algorithms that will identify, locate, and predict sea crimes across the world’s oceans. Sea crimes include things like illegal fishing, drug smuggling, and even slave labor and human trafficking. The difficulty in preventing these crimes arises from the characteristics of the so-called “dark fleet”, the ships that take part in these activities. These ships circumvent the law by shutting off their on-board GPS and navigating through both legal and illegal vessels.

The research is at the early stages, where researchers work off of a three-year grant from NASA to develop the computing tools necessary to collect and analyze data. The first challenge to overcome is synthesizing data about the world’s ships and their locations. The goal is to use the locations and patterns of legally-operated ships to detect illegal shipping behavior. This same methodology is used by astronomers, who make use of observable data to make inferences about unobserved celestial bodies that pass by.

The algorithms created by the research team will be tested before being used to develop a real-time model that can predict sea crimes. Data from the research will be shared with a number of organizations (coast guards, navies, fishermen, conservation groups, etc.) with an interest in keeping the world’s oceans safe.

Source: https://www.tillamookheadlightherald.com/news/researchers-to-use-big-data-to-predict-sea-crimes/article_a1d9bfec-3959-11e9-8ef1-1b9a72f6a581.html

2 thoughts on “Big Data Used in Sea Crime Prediction

  1. I am glad you posted about this, because illegal sea activity is not an area I would have thought IST would come into play. When I did research, I found it can also be used to help stop people from illegally fishing and that the black market fishing has a lot of revenue coming from it! With all the illegal fishing it is harder to track how much we are fishing and may lead to a further overfishing problem.There is a current push to have Automatic Identification System (AIS) required to be placed on fishing boats. It will connect to a satellite to allow tracking of the ships location, which will help us to see where the is an overabundance of fishing being done. Sadly, this has a lot of drawbacks, since people who do illegal activities will mostly likely not have one or will turn it off so they cannot be tracked. There really needs to be more research and innovation in using technology on problems with ships.

    References:
    Coren, M. (2018, October 21). “Movement ecologists” are turning technology against the global
    trade in illegal seafood. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1431253/illegal-fishing-tech
    nology-can-help-stop-seafood-crime/

    World Wildlife Fund.(2019). Technology Helps Fight Illegal Fishing. Retrieved from
    https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/technology-helps-fight-illegal-fishing

  2. Our entire world is being transformed by technology for the better and, in some cases, for the worst. For example, new technologies like Uber make it easy for people to human traffic. However, society is using technology to make advancements in security which can be monumental for the safety of citizens everywhere. Advancements in security are being seen everywhere even in the big, blue sea. Researchers at Oregon State University are experimenting with using artificial intelligence to catch illegal sea crimes. In my opinion, this is a great use of research funding. If these researchers can get around the obstacles they are currently facing, they can improve the safety of the seas and safety domestically in the US. For example, these technologies could help combat human trafficking, a global issue, by tracking illegal boats that may be holding hostages using algorithms. Additionally, these ships can stop illegal fisheries that do not follow fishing rules. These pirates are making beautiful creatures go extinct, participating in unethical fishing practices, and depleting resources for legal fisheries. Although being able to control the seas is a huge undertaking, being able to stop one illegal ship is better than not taking action at all.
    https://www.tillamookheadlightherald.com/news/researchers-to-use-big-data-to-predict-sea-crimes/article_a1d9bfec-3959-11e9-8ef1-1b9a72f6a581.html

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