For centuries countries have recognized that the security and economic well being of their nation was often as much dependent on situational awareness of what is happening on the oceans as near and within their land boundaries.  The protection of the maritime environmental and its natural resources also rose as major concerns in the last half of the 20th Century.  In the last few years, many governments have developed the ability to acquire much of the required information through unclassified space technology.  However, some impediments still remain.   No one nation has sufficient resources to fully protect their own borders and the information is available only from a number of disassociated systems, and that information is processed, analyzed, understood and acted upon by a wide variety of national and international organizations, some acting in partial concert, some acting alone  Common standards and collaborative development and employment are key to the building of a global system and this workshop is designed to further the effort of building the understanding of the need for those standards, and collaborative development and employment.

The workshop will look at the technologies that are available, and recommend a way forward for sharing the knowledge that is being gleaned from these various systems.  Initiatives from the governments as far separated as Canada, Ireland, Ghana, Australia, Chile and Japan are already underway to move these processes forward in a regional sense, but much more needs to be done.  

U.S. Presidential directive PPD-4 of June 28, 2010 emphasizes U.S. leadership in collaborating internationally on mutually beneficial space activities and this effort is directly in line with that directive, even though it remains a separate initiative, focused more on the technology than the required governance, but with the hope that once the technology is more fully understood more peoples and governments will join this global initiative.

Who should attend

• Government
  • US Coast Guard
  • Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate
  • DoD Maritime Domain Awareness
  • Intelligence agencies
• Enbassy Staff
  • R&D Attachés
  • Space Policy Attachés
  • Homeland Security Attachés
• Industry
  • satellite manufacurers
  • systems integrators
  • visual representation experts
  • interested in space commercialisation
  • Insurance Industry
  • Shipping firms
  • smuggling
  • Pollution remediation
  • Piracy