New ICEYE Ocean Vision Strengthens Maritime Security Applications

ICEYE, the global leader in SAR satellite operations for Earth observation, today announces the launch of ICEYE Ocean Vision, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) product family, to provide actionable intelligence for maritime domain awareness. 

Nearly 75% of international trade occurs over water, making ocean shipping a cornerstone of global economic activity.  Heightened geopolitical tensions combined with the rapid proliferation of waterway hazards together present a unique challenge for corporations and nations to maintain efficient and lawful maritime operations.

As the first in the ICEYE Ocean Vision family of SAR derivative products, ICEYE Ocean Vision Detect, available today, delivers insights into the presence, location, and size of vessels at sea, allowing authorities to take decisive action in mitigating threats. Drawing upon ICEYE’s unique ability to collect over 80,000 km2 in a single image, combined with an expanding constellation size and advanced algorithms, ICEYE provides application-specific capabilities to meet evolving maritime security needs, from economic activity monitoring to infrastructure surveillance, policy enforcement to hazard avoidance. The broader ICEYE Ocean Vision category will enable end users to consistently detect, identify, characterize, and track global maritime activity. 

John Cartwright, SVP and Head of Data Product at ICEYE said: “For many nations, maritime awareness is the most acute national security use case. However, the maritime environment presents a significant challenge, with vast expanses of ocean to search and monitor.

“SAR satellites detect the strong signatures of vessels that stand out against the dark background of the ocean’s surface and can render vessels visible to SAR sensors at night and during adverse weather conditions that often occur at sea.

“ICEYE Ocean Vision takes the power of SAR one step further, helping public and private sector customers easily access the vital information that can inform their decision-making during highly critical situations at sea.”

ICEYE Ocean Vision Detect combines the unique capabilities of ICEYE’s satellite constellation with machine-learning-driven analytical workflows to deliver specialized SAR data-derived information layers. SAR data derivatives enable customers to rapidly access and analyze the unique information contained within SAR data, and can be easily integrated with complementary data sources, such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) or radio frequency (RF) data, to address a wide variety of maritime use cases.  Analysts, even those without SAR domain expertise, can use ICEYE Ocean Vision Detect to monitor more areas of interest more frequently to achieve operational clarity quickly.

Andy Challen, Vice President Missions Sales UK said: "Ocean Vision Detect combines the proven and operational ICEYE SAR satellite capability with innovative additional analysis to provide decision makers in the maritime domain with a persistent, easy to use summary of detected vessels.

“The ability to detect vessels in vast swathes of open sea and coastlines, regardless of the time of day or visibility conditions, adds a crucial element of a layered ISR structure to complement and gap fill current surface based detection capabilities. ICEYE's constellation size, using Ocean Vision Detect, can provide intelligence on UK and partners' maritime interests globally."

John Cartwright, Head of Data Product at ICEYE added: “In recent multinational exercises, ICEYE Ocean Vision Detect demonstrated exemplary accuracy in identifying vessels engaged in illicit trade, illegal smuggling, and other types of nefarious activities.

“ICEYE Ocean Vision Detect holds great potential for environmental NGOs to track illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and monitor inaccessible locations and Marine Protected Areas.”