Set up by two former Israeli navy intelligence officers in 2010, Tel Aviv-based Windward is a relentless ocean sleuth. Its technology has thrown light on a wide range of murky maritime activities – from attempts by Iran to defy oil sanctions to Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea – even when the perpetrators are trying to evade detection.
Windward uses different data sources to map events across the world's oceans. These include freely available sources – such as a ship’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) identifier number or its maximum deadweight – alongside proprietary satellite imagery from Planet.com, weather data from Meteomatics, and route information gleaned from the automatic identification system (AIS) that every ship must broadcast. These datasets are augmented with information provided by clients – which include the UN, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), and US agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of Naval Intelligence.
“What is exclusive to us is our marriage of data science and maritime expertise,” Windward co-founder and CEO Ami Daniel says, in his plush office overlooking the Mediterranean.
“We take about 100 million data points a day to create a profile for each and every ship, and combine them to create their full path history,” senior data scientist Yonit Hoffman explains.
Much available information about vessels is limited to what they choose to disclose, facilitating detection-avoidance. For example, an Iranian oil tanker seeking to dodge sanctions could change its nationality and adopt a so-called flag of convenience, or – even simpler – switch off its transponder on its way to an importer’s port.
That’s where AI comes into play, enabling Windward to build what it calls “operational profiles” of ships, based on actual activity. “A vessel can change its name, but it's likely to continue behaving in the same way – it's like an escaped convict changing his name, appearance and social security number but still visiting his elderly mother,” says Hoffman.
By correlating information on a vessel’s current and past positions with data on navigation, weather, ports and trading patterns, Windward is able to create a unique fingerprint. “That's the vessel’s operational profile, and that unique signature remains the same,” Hoffman explains.
By factoring in how a vessel is actually used, how much wear-and-tear its machinery has suffered, and the time it spends at sea in bad weather, Windward trains its machine learning models to try to spot and predict signs of criminal activity.
“Say you are a massive tanker registered in Panama, with owners in Singapore. At face value, there’s no ties to Iran,” explains Daniel. But certain behaviours will get it flagged as a potential sanction-skirter. “According to our data, this tanker has not made a single port call in three years. Which is very very rare. It did, however, turn off its transmissions, which our system can recognise and which is very common for ships trying to evade sanctions.” By examining its deadweight and using satellite images to track its route, “we picked up on it and we found that it did go to Iran after all – even though when it went through Gibraltar it never said it was Iranian”.
Using its own data and profiles allows Windward to monitor nefarious activity at a scale that was not previously possible. While the standard IMO system includes about 70,000 registered ships, Windward tracks around 400,000 – including smaller fishing boats outside the IMO's limits. This allows the company to expose Chinese intimidation of Vietnamese fishing boats in the disputed waters of South China Sea.
Windward’s latest focus is on sustainability and the enforcing of environmental regulations in the shipping industry. To help chart that course, it has recruited a new chairman: Lord Browne, a former CEO of British Petroleum and an advocate of action on climate change.
But sanction surveillance is still by far its most lucrative business, earning Windward a growing list of state clients, and attracting investors such as the former CIA chief David Petraeus. Rogue operators are upping their game, and that is likely to increase demand for Windward's skillset.
“Regimes like North Korea are becoming more sophisticated,” Daniel says. “People were cocky and brazen, because no one was looking.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
