Enhancing automatic maritime surveillance systems with visual information

Automatic surveillance systems for the maritimedomain are becoming more and more important due to a constantincrease of naval traffic and to the simultaneous reduction ofcrews on decks. However, available technology still provides onlya limited support to this kind of applications. In this paper,a modular system for intelligent maritime surveillance, capableof fusing information from heterogeneous sources, is described.The system is designed to enhance the functions of the existingVessel Traffic Services systems and to be deployable in populatedareas, where radar-based systems cannot be used due to the highelectromagnetic radiation emissions. A quantitative evaluationof the proposed approach has been carried out on a largeand publicly available data set of images and videos, collectedfrom multiple real sites, with different light, weather, and trafficconditions.