This group refers to a set of technologies which use satellite imagery, or sensors looking for changes in the surrounding environment to identify vessels and activity of vessels in a particular area.

This is usually done via a ‘tip and cue’ methodology, by which customers can select an area of ocean and request an image or reading over that area the next time a satellite is above this location.

Suppliers are also capturing images passively, building up a historical database of images and sensor readings.

1. Optical satellite imagery is utilised to visually capture and identify ships at sea, enabling the monitoring of maritime traffic and activities globally.
   

2. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is used in maritime surveillance to detect and track ships by providing high-resolution images, regardless of weather conditions or time of day, through the use of radar signals that can penetrate cloud cover and darkness.

Benefits:

Provides actual evidence of a vessels position in a specific location. Which provides significantly more confidence when making decisions.

Product economics are improving, with space travel becoming cheaper, these tools are starting to move into the commercial space, rather than limited to governmental customers.

Drawbacks:

Typically, no historical data, limiting the compliance and KYC use cases which need to look back over a number of months as per their processes.

Some challenges still exist when trying to match the image to a vessel database, which either requires additional technology or previous experience in doing this type of intelligence analysis.