Scout Marine Navigation Data Service and Lookout Boat Sensor

L. Durbeck, P. Athanas
Phase II - Cell Matrix Corporation, Virginia, United States

Keywords: geospatial data, data fusion, maritime, safety of navigation, coastal waterways, hazards to navigation

“Scout” provides a service and a sensor to aid with marine navigation while also building greater awareness in coastal waterways. Under a Phase I/II SBIR from NOAA TPO, CMC is developing Scout, which provides the technology and infrastructure to improve the quantity and quality of reporting mariners do and how it reaches its audiences. Scout enables mariners to participate easily in generating hazards data and updating the common representation of hazards data. Scout simplifies detection, reporting and consumption of information on hazardous conditions. Besides the local BNM, boats equipped with CMC's "Lookout" electronic device are the main contributors of fresh data. Lookout's environmental monitoring sensors and AI monitor the vessel’s vicinity for any signs of hazardous conditions, functioning like a crew member on lookout. Scout simplifies reporting of dangerous boating conditions by relaying observations to a common source point for further analysis in combination with other reports and other data. This enriched data is published in near-real-time and provided back to mariners as chart layers in chart plotters and navigational software or as location-based alerts in an app. Users subscribed to updates from “Scout” receive location-based navigational assistance within their navigation tools that alert them to potential dangers.