Page 39: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2020)

“This then became an exercise in integrating all of the sepa-

Shifting Focus rate systems into a port security solution.”

Similarly, ION has been shifting its focus. While the com- pany’s core business is seismic operations, it’s recently been

Operations Management looking at how its capabilities could be relevant to other mar-

Marlin is a rule-based software solution for operations man- kets. The idea that it could support naval assets came up within the last couple of years and resulted in ION getting involved agement. It combines temporal planning with spatial aware- in ANTX. The event is run every year by the Naval Undersea ness, primarily using real-time ships’ AIS (automatic iden-

Warfare Center (NUWC) out of Newport, Rhode Island, and ti? cation system), as well as radar and other tracked target feeds to improve operational ef? ciency. ION has been using

CNMOC (Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command),

Marlin and other command and control software platforms for based at Stennis, MS. more than three decades in the offshore oil and gas industry.

For ANTX 2019, ION proposed a joint exercise with Au-

There, it’s mostly used in managing seismic survey opera- toNaut, a U.K. based wave propelled unmanned surface ves- sel (USV) developer, part of the Seiche group of companies, tions, involving towed streamer surveys comprising up to 14 to address the ANTX Marine Security theme. An AutoNaut hydrophone arrays each reaching up to 10km long or seabed

USV would provide environmental monitoring and be hooked surveys with multiple surface vessels and assets deployed on the sea? oor. “In later years, we found that, as these surveys in to Marlin, ION’s marine operations management platform. “However, as we progressed through the planning stages were increasingly needed around and in the middle of busy the CNMOC group teamed us up with Atlas Elektronik, who offshore oil? elds, the seismic survey operations were in con- ? ict with other oil? eld operations,” says Gentle. “At this point provided the Cerberus Diver Detection Sonar, and Marine Ar- resting Technologies, who have a non-lethal counter measure we turned our attention to simultaneous operations manage- device in the form of their Stingray capture net,” says Gentle. ment (simops) enabling the seismic surveys and the oil? eld

Marlin Screenshot showing the port area with zones of operation setup around the shore-side stations and target of interest (diver) being tracked moving towards the safe zone this shows the targets within those zones top left (red is safe zone, orange ops zone, and yellow is monitored zone).

Image: ION www.marinelink.com 39

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