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Report of PMAR Workshop

Version 02(draft) (7 Dec 2012)

The final workshop of the PMAR project (Piracy, Maritime Awareness and Risks) Date: 20-22 Nov 2012 Place: Mombasa, Kenya Organiser: European Commission – Joint Research Centre (JRC)

The PMAR project is a study into building up maritime awareness with the authorities in the countries around the seas off the Horn of Africa. Maritime awareness is knowing what is happening at sea and being able to recognise threats in time. As such, it is a cornerstone capability in combatting piracy, but also for maritime governance in general.

The objectives of the workshop were: 1. To present the PMAR project results to maritime authorities in the East Africa – Western Indian Ocean region. 2. To get feedback / confirmation on the usefulness of the PMAR concept for regional maritime awareness as a tool for counter-piracy in that area; from the user states in the region, as well as from the international actors and/or donors (other EU bodies, IMO, U.S.). 3. To discuss possible ways ahead for enhancing maritime awareness in the region.

The workshop was attended by representatives from 9 countries in the East Africa – Western Indian Ocean region, 6 Regional Organisations, 2 EU Member States, the U.S., one UN organization and 6 institutes or projects from the EU. Five more countries in the region and one other Regional Organisation had been invited but could not come. The table specifies the attendance:

Type # Who Country in the region 9 Comoros, India, Kenya, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Reunion, Seychelles, Yemen Regional organisation 6 ACP, COMESA, EASFCOM, IGAD, IOC, SADC EU Member State 2 UK, FR UN organisation 1 IMO EU institution, DG 6 DEVCO, EEAS, EUNAVFOR, JRC, MARSIC, CRIMARIO and project Other countries 1 U.S. Total 25

The main workshop took place on 21 November and consisted of one full day of presentations and discussions. It was preceded by an informal reception on the evening before (20th), and it was followed on the next morning (22 Nov) by a visit to the Regional Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (RMRCC) of the Kenya Maritime Authority in Mombasa. There, a small web-based demonstration of some of the PMAR functionality was done, and the workshop participants were also shown around the RMRCC.

The workshop was opened by JRC as the organiser. A welcome to the participants was extended by the Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) as the hosting country. Following a request of JRC, the KMA had already prior to the workshop agreed that the RMRCC could be used as a location to host a trial implementation of the PMAR system for maritime awareness. The actual happening of a trial implementation is however still contingent upon funding becoming available for that.

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The PMAR project was executed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) at the request of the European Parliament. As PMAR is only one project among many initiatives aimed at maritime capacity building and counter-piracy for the region, the workshop endeavoured to make clear how PMAR fits in with the other initiatives. Therefore, presentations on a number of other activities were included in the agenda. The following were presented:

Initiative Actor Action Plan for the EU fight against piracy EU - European External Action Service (EEAS) and EUCAP Nestor Instrument for Stability – Critical Maritime EU - European Commission Routes MASE (Program to Promote Regional EU - European Commission - European Maritime Security) Development Fund IMO counter-piracy activities in the region IMO U.S. maritime capacity building activities in U.S. Naval Forces Africa the region PMAR project EU - European Commission - JRC MARSIC project EU - European Commission - external experts CRIMARIO project EU - European Commission - external experts

The presentations of all these initiatives and the workshop agenda are available on the web site. (Use the link ‘PMAR workshop agenda and presentations’ on https://bluehub.jrc.ec.europa.eu/.)

The EEAS presentation gave an overview of the EU’s comprehensive approach in the fight against piracy. A key consideration is the need to work with international, regional and local partners. The cornerstones of the EU policy are: a strategic framework for the Horn of Africa (HoA); a special representative for the HoA; and three on-going missions under the Common Security and Defence Policy. These three are EUNAVFOR Atalanta, the EU Training Mission Somalia and the new EUCAP Nestor. The latter aims at maritime capacity building for the sea-going activities in Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania and Seychelles (later also Yemen), and for a maritime police force in Somaliland, Puntland and possibly Galmudug. The relations with the other EU initiatives were pointed out, and with the international strategic partners.

The Critical Maritime Routes action was set up in 2009 under the Instrument for Stability to address the security and safety of essential maritime routes. In the long term, the programme aims at improved maritime governance. Geographically, the areas of interest are Gulf of Guinea, wider Western Indian Ocean, South Asia and South East Asia. It is under this program that the MARSIC and CRIMARIO projects are funded, and also a project on law enforcement in East Africa.

The MASE program for Maritime Security in the ESA-IO region in the framework of the HoA strategy is currently being defined. Ultimate goal is to contribute to global security and create a favourable environment for the economic development of the ESA-IO region and beyond. Five results have been defined, being (1) Somalia inland action plan, (2) Legal and infrastructure capability for arrest, detention and prosecution, (3) Regional capacity to mitigate piracy-related financial flows, (4) National / regional capacity for maritime tasks, and (5) Regional coordination and information exchange. These are to be implemented by specified Regional Organisations. As result 4 contains improved maritime domain awareness, there is a clear window for synergies with PMAR. PMAR could also contribute to result 5. The program is to be approved early 2013 and will last 5 years.

The IMO presentation covered the present status of the (non-binding) Djibouti Code of Conduct. IMO’s work concerns helping countries with introducing anti-piracy legislation, building the training centre in Djibouti, and organising trainings, in close cooperation with MARSIC and also at the NATO training centre in Crete (NMIOTC). New initiatives that are important are the detailed charting of the behaviour of the dhows and of the small fishing boats. This knowledge helps to better recognise pirate

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DRAFT boats and other safety and security risks. This also includes more actively involving the dhow community, so that they will report suspicious behaviour and incidents. With this, the NATO shipping centre is involved. Furthermore, IMO is involved in setting up coastal surveillance facilities for civilian users, in particular together with and complementing U.S. support that is aimed at military users. Projects to install coastal radars and AIS are on-going in Tanzania and Mozambique, and hopefully later in Madagascar (West coast) and Comoros. IMO would like to see that the coastal maritime surveillance data is fused and linked to a regional network, which should include Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Yemen and Oman. IMO showed examples of wide- area surveillance, with LRIT, VMS and satellite AIS, including cost estimates. The need for patrol assets is mentioned. Finally, it is proposed that the way to exchange information is: first nationally from agencies to a national coordination centre, and then regionally between national coordination centres.

The U.S. Naval Forces Africa (6th Fleet, based in Naples) gave a presentation on their MDA capacity building support to Africa. It falls under one of NAVAF’s main missions, the one for Maritime Security Operations. (NB: Counter-piracy as such falls under 5th Fleet in Bahrain.) The ultimate goal is to have African authorities patrol the African seas. They work with the military and sometimes with coast guards. The program has a set of specific goals, at strategic, operational and tactical level. They aim to have a ten-year horizon for the projects, so as to include also operational funding; most of the equipment buying has finished by now. Their SeaVision tool, to visualise the AIS data collected through the global MSSIS network, is being further developed and enriched, with drawing tools to support operations, and with satellite AIS, which covers East and West Africa (but not North and South) out to 400 NM and now comes from two providers with 8 satellites and with a latency of maximum 2 hours. Now 19 countries in Africa use SeaVision regularly. The 2012 Cutlass Express exercise has indicated, through using satellite SAR, that about 60 % of the vessels that should be seen on AIS are in fact not.

The MARSIC project concerns itself with the development of the regional centres under the Djibouti Code of Conduct: Sana’a, Mombasa, Dar Es Salaam and Djibouti. The organisation, workings (information sharing and training) and status of the centres was reviewed. Recent developments include: Providing Standard Operating Practices for counter-piracy; Assisting the National Focal Points in their inter-agency role; Developing an analysis cell and data bases to be used; Setting up a regional AIS sharing network between Oman, Yemen and Djibouti; and Considering a maritime security cooperation forum with an advisory committee at DG level and a voluntary contributions fund.

The CRIMARIO project in its present phase aims to defined concrete further actions under the Critical Maritime Routes program. It is aimed at ensuring safe and secure maritime trade routes, with a wider and longer perspective than anti-piracy alone, including navigation safety, accident response and natural resource protection. In the ESA-IO region, the critical maritime routes are for a large part on the open sea, out of reach of coastal surveillance.

The results of the PMAR project were put forward in a two-hour presentation. The PMAR concept entails the creation of a single, integrated, real-time, dynamic picture of the region-wide merchant ship traffic, referred to as the Maritime Situational Picture (MSP). The picture covers the whole Western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, and constitutes as such a regional approach. In combination with piracy activity reports, this picture is to be used by operational maritime authorities in their counter-piracy tasks, in particular to understand present risks and impending threats, warn merchant ships at risk, advise merchant shipping on safe routing, and plan and direct sea- and airborne patrol assets if available. The historic collection of real-time MSPs is aggregated into statistics and patterns of ship traffic, to aid the interpretation of the daily ship occurrence, and for use in strategic planning. Likewise, statistics and historic patterns of piracy occurrence aid in the evaluation and forecasting of risks.

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The Maritime Situational Picture is built up from a collection of incoming data from a variety of sources, both government owned and commercially offered. In particular, data from AIS, LRIT and VMS are used, which are nationally or internationally mandated ship reporting systems. These data are fused into a single picture that tracks the merchant shipping across the whole region. To the extent that VMS is available, which today is still limited, also fishing ships are tracked. The real-time MSP is made by not only tracking the individual ships, primarily based on their (mostly unique) MMSI number, but also includes a prediction of the expected actual positions of the ships based on their most recent position reports and their speed and course. By additionally using space-borne Earth observation systems (cameras, radars on satellite), the picture is enriched with ships that are not reporting but that are detected in the satellite images. In this way, ships down to some 15-20 meter in length can be found. However, due to the technical limitations of the Earth observation satellites, the non-reporting ship traffic cannot be followed in a continuous way but can only be sampled from time to time. The smaller ships (< 15-20 m) still escape attention from the reporting and space-based observation systems. Moreover, they are present in the tens of thousands, for the most part innocent, so cannot meaningfully be all included in a region-wide picture. Furthermore, their innocence is very difficult to ascertain from a distance.

In the PMAR project an experimental system with state-of-the-art software has been developed, which produces the Maritime Situational Picture indicating the estimated ship positions in real-time on a digital map, with an update rate of once every 15 minutes. When a user clicks on a ship, information on that ship is displayed (MMSI number, IMO number, name, course, speed, …) and the past track of the ship is shown. This viewer can be accessed via internet.

The PMAR study also quantified the performance (completeness, accuracy) of the Maritime Situational Picture, and the additional values of the individual contributing data sources, to enable to make choices on which and how many data sources to use in an operational situation. Even though the technologies are advanced and they have costs associated with them, the PMAR study asserts that they are within reach of realisable capabilities in Africa and that, considering the impact of piracy, the costs are fully justifiable.

A way ahead was suggested in which a trial implementation of the PMAR system is set up in a maritime operations centre in the region – the Mombasa RMRCC being put forward for that, as one of the Information Sharing Centres under the Djibouti Code of Conduct. During a two-year period, the capacities could be built up in the centre, both for operating as well as for maintaining the software. During that time, functionalities, now existing at JRC, can be piecewise transferred from JRC to the centre, while at the same time the system can further evolve on the basis of operational feedback. As all data is obtained and exchanged via internet, the most critical demand on the local infrastructure is good internet connectivity. A two-tier implementation is possible where the region-wide picture is constructed in one central location using high bandwidth, which is then forwarded on lower bandwidth to one or more local centres, where the common picture can also be further enhanced if desired with information that is only locally available or relevant. For the implementation, it is possible to choose between various options, related to aspects like the extent of the geographic coverage and the level of accuracy and completeness. The funding for the trail implementation is however not yet secured.

The presentations were interspersed with constructive discussions. Points that were brought up included: - Countries in the region face many maritime security problems, including piracy and the security of maritime trade, but also smuggling, illegal immigration and illegal fishing. The PMAR concept directly contributes to these issues, and that could be emphasised more to help acceptance. - The PMAR study may facilitate with setting standards for interoperability, and may play a role in the presently on-going formulation of the African Union Maritime Strategy. - Synergies between the various initiatives should be investigated, e.g. between MASE and the U.S. MDA capacity building efforts, and between SeaVision and the PMAR system.

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- It would be good to integrate the region-wide PMAR picture with local pictures from coastal sensors. - The capacity building should extend to structural supporting capacities in educational and research institutes (universities). - There is a widely felt need to be better aware of small boat movements. Some novel studies and trial systems were mentioned.

The workshop conclusions are the following: 1. The workshop participants support the PMAR concept and recognise its usefulness to enhance maritime awareness and thereby the fight against piracy. They agree that PMAR should continue in the form of a trial implementation, to be carried out to the benefit of the whole region, at the Mombasa Information Sharing Centre (ISC) under the Djibouti Code of Conduct, located in the Mombasa Regional Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (RMRCC) of the Kenya Maritime Authority. 2. IMO welcomes the PMAR concept as a way to enhance maritime capacity building and will support its implementation. IMO recognises that PMAR could also become the system to integrate the coastal systems they are developing in the region. Furthermore, IMO suggests that JRC expertise is also used to define standards for data integration. Finally, IMO undertakes to explore possible ways to finance PMAR. 3. The European Commission will pursue means to support the PMAR implementation, e.g. under its MASE programme. As it has already been the case so far, the European Commission Joint Research Centre is ready to contribute to the continuation of PMAR through its institutional budget, to cover staff costs. 4. The Indian Ocean Commission, as executing regional body of the relevant MASE results, will consider including the PMAR implementation there under. 5. Detection and tracking of small boats was flagged as an issue of general interest. The PMAR continuation should take this into account. It should also explore synergies with the U.S. activities, in particular concerning the use of satellite AIS data. 6. Finally, the long term sustainability of the system needs to be taken into consideration; and this both by the regional authorities – including their commitment to the future implementation of a similar system – and by the international community. Regional cooperation, international coordination, empowerment of local authorities and sustainability in the long term are the key ingredients of this exercise.

JRC encouraged the participants to bring the results of this workshop to the attention of the relevant offices back home, and use the arguments suggested in the discussions to promote the further development of PMAR for the region.

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