The ANN (assistant naval navigator) system

The recreational boating community has always been plagued with a high incidence of serious accidents that have resulted in loss of life, grave injuries and property loss. Our paper discusses a next generation system enterprise that will apply a knowledge/cybernetic approach that provides: 1) An automatic Proactive Warning for severe navigation threats to participating operators of recreational and small commercial boats, followed by, and after operator acknowledgement, 2) An advisory threat evasive course/action. From our analyses of several years of USCG boating accident statistics, we expect that the system will reduce fatalities and serious injuries by about 30%.