TatukGIS has licensed the TatukGIS Developer Kernel and TatukGIS Internet Server products to SELEX Galileo, a Finmeccanica Company, which is one of the top ten global players in aerospace, defense, and security. SELEX Galileo has used the TatukGIS products to develop the ground station portion of an air surveillance system supplied to the Australian Customs Coastwatch. This system is used to plan, monitor, and evaluate surveillance tasks performed by fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft with the objective of developing and maintaining a tactical database of target and track information in order to present a current surface picture of the maritime boarder, i.e., a Maritime Zone Awareness (MZA).
A key part of air surveillance system is the ground station which collects information from all platforms. The ground system is composed of a set of workstations used by Customs operators that are networked to a database running on a central server. Data from the database server is made available to the workstations for data exploitation and analysis. One of the main features of the workstation application software is the mission management that is developed using the TatukGIS Developer Kernel (.NET edition). Ground station information is made available to remote operators through an ASP.NET web server application which replicates much of the map management interface of the workstation application. The web server part of the system uses the TatukGIS Internet Server and its Flash plug-in.
The map data is both vector and raster. For best performance with very large data sets, the raster layers are stored in the TatukGIS PixelStore SQL database format. The TatukGIS Editor (GIS desktop application) was used to prepare the map project.
The system delivered to the Australian Customs Coastwatch is derived from SELEX Galileo's Airborne Tactical Observation and Surveillance System - ATOS, an advanced and flexible airborne integrated observation and surveillance mission management system which is already installed on a wide range of platforms and is in operation with different customers. Solutions within the ATOS family are designed for uses ranging from fishery control, anti-smuggling, and immigration control to anti surface ship warfare and anti submarine warfare. The system's modular open architecture easily supports the integration of multiple sensors and workstations.
TatukGIS value-added partner in Italy,
Vita Fabrizio, provided local consulting on the use of TatukGIS products for this project.
More information about the organizations referenced in this article is available at the following links:
SELEX Galileo -
www.selexgalileo.com
Finmeccanica -
www.finmeccanica.com
Australian Customs and Boarder Protection Service -
www.customs.gov.au
Overview of Customs Coastwatch (PDF)