The Implications of Self-Reporting Systems for Maritime Domain Awareness

Self-reporting systems based on GPS-quality navigation information that is sent using widely-accepted standards and protocols, offer the potential to greatly improve important components of Maritime Domain Awareness MDA. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of some existing and evolving Self-Reporting Systems SRSs and to characterize them in order to discuss their relative impact on MDA. We argue that broadcast-based SRSs, such as the Automatic Identification System AIS, offer significant advantages over traditional sensor-based vessel tracking and that availability of information from SRSs will impact how command decisions related to MDA are made in the future. The social and public policy dimensions of using SRSs information for MDA are explored. Also, we discuss impacts on command decision making and raise the question of how much trust decision-makers should place in self-report information.