Thousands of vessels, from enormous cargo ships to much smaller fishing boats, annually traverse the waters around Alaska — and that activity is only increasing as global warming causes arctic ice to melt at a rapid clip. But how does the United States government keep track of all those vessels, especially in remote areas along the state’s western and northern coasts?
“It’s not simple,” said Dr. Shawn Butler, an assistant professor of computer science and computer systems engineering with the UAA College of Engineering (CoEng). “But our goal is to make it simpler.”
To put it simply, the U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for protecting the waters that surround our nation, including in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and there simply aren’t enough Coast Guard personnel to keep a direct watch over the 6,640 miles of Alaska coastline — so they rely on a variety of sophisticated monitoring tools that all feed into a unified system: CG OneView.
CG OneView, along with other similar systems used by the U.S. Armed Forces, is what’s known as a command and control system, or a CC System for short. Dr. Butler just so happens to be an expert on CC Systems, having spent the final decade of her 20 years of military service as the technical lead on the Global Command and Control System for the Department of Defense.
Continue reading at University of Alaska - Anchorage.
Image via James Evans / University of Alaska - Anchorage.