Protection in the Toughest Conditions
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Protecting Marine Assets: 4 Surveillance Essentials
Published:
April 2025
From drill ships and oil tankers to LNG carriers and scientific vessels, ensuring the safety of marine assets and those who work and live on them is essential. This blog explores solutions that enhance security and well-being at sea.
1. Choose cameras suited to conditions and compliance
Fixed and PTZ surveillance cameras used on marine assets must guarantee high-quality image capture in the harshest weather and operating conditions.
IR, thermal and multi-modal cameras offer valuable features for critical areas that need constant visibility day or night. Radiometric-enabled thermal cameras deliver specific benefits for marine-based process monitoring where relative heat variations can indicate risk. However, it’s important to remember that hazardous-area certifications (e.g. ATEX) apply if used in a potentially explosive environment.
Any camera used at sea should be housed in a marine-grade enclosure designed to withstand corrosion, shock, water, and dust ingress. For instance, an IP68 enclosure can withstand complete submersion for over 30 minutes. For most marine applications, cameras should comply with DNV and the ISPS Code. You can find a breakdown of these and other key certifications here.
2. Use AI for improved crew safety
Workers on vessels do dangerous jobs in hazardous conditions, often far from any significant medical support. This means that responding quickly to any threat to their safety is vital.
AI can help. It can detect when the correct PPE isn’t worn, recognise slips, trips, falls, or even potential ‘person overboard’ scenarios. It can also identify when personnel are too close to dangerous equipment or where other safety protocols are breached.
Practical examples of this might be to enforce ‘two-person team’ protocols in specific zones. Or, when linked to RFID badges, to ensure that those operating in those zones have the correct qualifications to do so.
3. Guard against piracy through systems integration
Piracy is always a threat to marine-based assets. Especially within the oil and gas industry, where the risk of ‘petro-piracy’ remains high.
Look for security and surveillance software that supports and simplifies systems integration. By combining and analysing data from radar, cameras, AI tools, ECDIS and Automatic Identification System (AIS), a powerful warning system can be established, where any vessel crossing a virtual perimeter is detected, classified, and tracked.
You can link alerts generated to workflows that automate and assist with evasive manoeuvres and distress notifications. We’ve also had customers configure their system to ‘black out’ surveillance monitors should unauthorised or hostile boarding occur, ensuring aggressors have no means to surveil the rest of the vessel.
4. Use remote monitoring for resource control and fleet overview
Lean-crewed, uncrewed, and even remotely operated vessels are becoming the norm, with drivers ranging from decarbonisation to cost efficiency. Monitoring these assets remotely means fewer human resources are needed without compromising safety or security.
Using cloud technology and web-client solutions, authorised users can securely access specific security and surveillance software features remotely via a browser from any internet-connected device.
This is ideal for operators of multiple vessels looking to centralise process and security monitoring. Management teams can log in to view live footage, data, and dashboard reports from multiple marine assets, wherever they are in the world.
Monitoring and Managing Potentially Explosive Environments
This guide looks at a range of surveillance solutions ideally suited to monitoring and managing potentially explosive environments.
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