The US Navy has taken initiatives to fund a project to develop web applications to cut down maritime piracy. The web applications are aimed to help multinational navy forces, responsible for policing the oceans, combat piracy in a better way. The project would be funded through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) of USA. A grant amounting $1 million has been sanctioned already.

The project, named International Collaborative Development for Enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness (ICODE MDA), is a collaboration between ONR and Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific). ONR has partnered with researchers at the Technical University of Federico Santa Maria in Chile to make the web applications.

The web applications will enable ‘sailors and maritime operators to analyze data and other information to combat pirates, drug smugglers, arms traffickers, illegal fishermen and other nefarious groups.’ The web tools will be developed on an open source environment and will be hosted on http://code.google.com. The web applications will support multiple maritime network systems so that navies around the globe can collectively use the information for joint operations against maritime piracy.

ICODE MDA is also in talks with some other African nations over partnership in the project. These institutions include University of Ghana, University of Pretoria, University of Mauritius and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa.

For more information on the development process visit http://code.google.com/p/icode-mda/.

Source : United States Navy
Thanks To : Wired

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