Critical embedded SYSTEMS and THE safety of maritime AREAS

Project manager for the CMA: Valérie ROY

In the context of its research on embedded systems, the CMA took part in the SECMAR project of the Mer PACA Competitiveness cluster. The aim of this project, now finished, was to provide a concrete response to the detection of a terrorist threat that would use the sea, on or below the surface, as a favored means of attacking a coastal site of vital importance. This project grouped together manufacturers and research laboratories of the PACA region with the aim of realizing the prototype of an intrusion detection system intended for the site of the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille (GPMM).

A thesis directed by Valérie ROY took place in the context of this project. It was defended by Salma ZOUAOUI on 23 July 2012. The aim of the research by the interested party was to help port staff to identify threatening behaviors of ships to be able to act efficiently in the event of a real danger. In this respect, the PhD student developed a system to analyze and recognize ship behavior formed from two complementary sub-modules.
- The first was built from the Hidden Markov model probabilistic approach and mainly deals with nominal behaviors of big ships characterized by regular and recurring transfers to the port.
- The second was built from the reactive synchronous language Esterel and takes into account the aggressive and transgressive behavior of all types of ships, notably that of small boats that circulate freely and randomly in the port. The global decision-support system enabled proper recognition in real time of the different ship behaviors on advancing to the port.

With regard the promising results that Salma ZOUAOUI obtained through this module, it is possible that it will be generalized to other ports around the world as well as to other fields of application, notably the airport domain.

More information on Salma ZOUAOUI’s thesis

 

 

Centre de Mathématiques Appliqués

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