SIRAMIS : Preliminary analysis of acoustic and seismic ship signatures

SIRAMIS is a project coordinated by the European Defence Agency standing for Signature Response Analysis on Multi Influence Sensors. As most of the international trade is carried out through marine routes, it is important to evaluate the vulnerability of the merchant vessel fleet to sea mines in order to be able to limit the potential exposure to this threat and apply effective mine counter measures like Target Simulation Mode mine sweeping. In this project, the participating nations pool their measurement and analysis capabilities to improve their knowledge on the underwater signatures of merchant vessels and understanding of the near field ship signature in relevant and realistic scenarios. The project involves a series of recording campaigns performed near shipping lanes in the national waters of the participants, using various multi-influence measurement systems. The data analysis will help to separate the effect of the differences between the measurement systems and the environments from the features specific to the measured ships. A further analysis will investigate the relationship between the merchant vessels signatures and their characteristics. This paper presents the initial results of the acoustic and seismic signature analysis.