Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
“ Dead Man’s Chest” ( Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson)
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
“ Dead Man’s Chest” ( Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson)
When a talk comes
about pirates, usually the images of Captain Jack Sparrow, the
traditional “Jolly Roger”, views of barrels of rum and old wooden chests
full of gold coins spring to mind. Or it can be stories about Queen
Elizabeth of England, Sir Francis Drake who defeated the Spanish Armada,
and Sir Henry Morgan notorious for his Caribbean adventures. However
maritime piracy did not sink into oblivion. Nowadays this theme has lost
its romantic glory, but it still has its significance for a present-day
society.
Basically
a goal of pirates remains the same that is capture of hostages, goods
and gold. And there is a little distinction from ancient times, not gold
but ‘black gold’ (i.e. petroleum) consists the main interest of modern
pirates these days. Attacking oil tankers that carry both petroleum and
money is common practice for pirates in this day and age. Along with
that, means used by pirates have greatly changed, namely equipment and
technology. The rise in modern maritime piracy started in Somali waters
and for a rather short period of time of 10 years it has expanded
extremely: armory of pirates has become diversified and their strategies
of capturing vessels developed.
According
to Tactical Intelligence International, a business providing maritime
security, military training and government consulting for over 10 years,
pirates have started to use heavy weapons and specific facilities to
climb up vessels and conduct their operations from so-called mother
ships. Recent tactics of pirates include using of remote bases that
enables them to control and carry out operations at a greater distance
of the shore, and for a longer time.
One
of the main issues of the fight against piracy is pirates going further
into the sea and thus making it harder for warships of the European
Union to guard potentially dangerous areas. This fact decreases chances
of assisting victimized vessels in time even if a message about an act
of piracy is received.
Consequently,
in spite of cooperation of naval forces of different states and the use
of expensive preventive measures such as the presence of armed guards
on board, the global problem of piracy has not been solved for several
decades and it is still crucial. One of the recommended measures to
prevent attacks is to limit access to information on the movement of
ships. However unfortunately, international practice shows that these
measures are useless or, at least, they work for some time.
Throughout
the world, data become easy to access, monitoring systems can be used
by the general public. Any attempt to restrict information flows is
pointless like the Luddite movement or disapproval of Uber application
by taxi drivers operating individually. As a result, digital
technologies are widely employed by pirates and drug cartels: hackers
break into IT systems of ports, while pirates use AIS monitoring system,
and shipping containers with the most expensive goods are tracked by
barcode.
One can assume that in the near future the way of the fight against piracy will obtain more technological characteristics.
Modern technologies in the field of satellite data allow conducting of such measures as the global monitoring of the movement of vessels, not only near the coast, but also in the open ocean, including the detection of ships which hide their personal information, i.e. potential pirates.
Modern technologies in the field of satellite data allow conducting of such measures as the global monitoring of the movement of vessels, not only near the coast, but also in the open ocean, including the detection of ships which hide their personal information, i.e. potential pirates.
Photo of the ship from satellites
Current
information about vessels for any polygon in an API response from an
analytical service OWM AIS and monitoring of suspicious areas on
satellite images make it possible to conduct an investigation in a
particular area and to detect vessels that do not report their location,
as well as to determine where and when a missing ship transmitted its
last signal. Owing to technology of OWM Platform Big Data and
availability of a direct source of satellite data from the company
SpaceQuest, OpenWeatherMap develops complex products such as, for
instance, Density Maps where the routes of vessels like oil tankers and
container ships are clearly observed via current and historical position
of vessel. And thus, knowing the places where pirates are most likely
to appear, one can choose areas to monitor the route, the type and the
presence of signal from vessel, not across the sea in general, but in
definite most dangerous areas.
Density Maps reflects the main ways and the density of the ships movement
