Elefsis Port Authority S.A. participates in Smart Maritime And Underwater Guardian (SMAUG) project.

 SMAUG (Smart Maritime And Underwater Guardian) will pay particular attention to the new techniques used by the smugglers, increasing the security of maritime infrastructures covering ports, passenger transport and energy supply against these threats (hence the project name). The objective is to create a system as a whole to help the monitoring process of the security in Maritime port all around Europe.

The primary goal of SMAUG is to improve the underwater detection of threats in ports and their entrance routes, by means of a integrated system capable of providing data concerning threat analysis between 3 main elements: ports security infrastructure, advanced underwater detection systems and surveillance vessels. To achieve this goal, it is divided into 4 Building blocks:
Smart: Use of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms on UAVs.
Maritime: Information coming from the Port Community systems (PCS).
Underwater: Detection of illicit and dangerous goods and/or of threats hidden below the water surface.
Guardian: System as whole capable of improve security of maritime infrastructures and maritime transport.

Underwater detection and location will be performed by four primary methods:

i) acoustic detection, where a series of hydrophones will listen for sounds emitted by small underwater vehicles and will be processed by artificial intelligence methods,

ii) rapid sonar hull scan, used to scan ships hulls and perform harbour floor scanning, iii) high resolution sonar inspection, to inspect objects in water with poor visibility, and

iv) collective autonomous location, where a swarm of autonomous underwater vehicles will act cooperatively.

This will provide information to Artificial Intelligence modules which will improve the way detecting illicit and dangerous goods and/or of threats hidden below the water surface is currently done, taking into account sources such as Unmanned Surface Vehicle Systems, (USV), underswater remote operation vehicle (ROV), UAV (Aerial autonomous vehicle) and Port current information sources. The combination of these tools will allow SMAUG to prompt solutions capable of detecting possible threats to infrastructure or vessels, as well as identify vessels with concealed goods.

List of participants