Center for Coastline Security Technology, Year 3

Abstract : The Center for Coastline Security Technology (CCST) focuses on research, simulation, and evaluation of coastal defense and marine domain awareness equipment, sensors and components. It builds upon the existing efforts and expertise in coastal systems and sensor research at the Institute for Ocean and Systems Engineering (IOSE), the Imaging Technology Center, and the Department of Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University. New technologies are needed to enhance surveillance and inspections of marine activities in the coastal zone that includes major ports, small inlets, beaches, remote coastal areas and their approaches. To be efficient and cost effective it is imperative to mount the surveillance systems and sensors on autonomous platforms that can operate unsupervised for extended periods of time. The task is to effectively integrate sensors with underwater, surface and airborne autonomous and remotely operated platforms and to incorporate video and image analysis and data mining methods to quickly and effectively identify threat events. This effort has leveraged the existing U.S. Navy marine test & evaluation facilities at the South Florida Testing Facility, which is adjacent to the major seaport at Port Everglades. This provides a unique land and aquatic test bed for the evaluation of acoustic sensors and high definition underwater and surface video mounted on unmanned fixed or mobile platforms. This report describes the continuation of the work started in Year One and Two of the CCST project. The objective of the work in Year Three was to focus on developing technology for 3D imaging. Optical applications are based on the High Resolution Video imaging systems developed by FAU's Imaging Technology Center, and, for underwater applications, a high resolution sonar systems has been developed which can be mounted on a tetherless remotely piloted underwater vehicle.