On the Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) to Enhance Safety and Security at Sea

Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is the process of public developing a plan for allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas. The constant increase in marine traffic and the simultaneous growth of the demand for installing offshore wind power plants require an adequate planning strategy and effective monitoring and surveillance solutions for managing the traffic volume as well as to consent to improve the wind energy capacity. The adoption of the e-Navigation is a possible solution for improving safety and security at sea by integrating maritime information onboard and ashore. AIS traffic data represent a fundamental source of information, since the analysis of AIS data can highlight the presence of congested areas as well as of illegal actions, such as smuggling, pollution, and unauthorized phishing in protected areas. Indeed, those activities are often characterized by abnormal maneuvers that can be recognized by analyzing the routes of the vessels. In this paper, we present a complete pipeline for displaying and analysing publicly available AIS data, in order to carry out an AISbased route analysis. An example is described using only open-source software.