Uses and Misuses of the Automatic Identification System

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is widely used by mariners at sea as a compulsory collision prevention device on-board. Since the inception of collaborative platforms that gather AIS messages received by a network of stations, large worldwide AIS datasets can be assembled and enable a series of analyses of the maritime traffic, including an increase of the maritime domain awareness, the assessment and prediction of trajectories, the detection of anomalies, the measurement of fishing pressure, vessel-born noise and air pollution and the global modelling of the maritime traffic. However a series of misuses of the AIS does exist, and data may lack reliability as some users broadcast errors or intentionally falsify the information sent by the device. In this respect, a methodology to assess the integrity and veracity of AIS messages has been developed, leading to the determination of maritime risks in support to maritime monitoring activities. In this paper, an exemplification is proposed, based on AIS possible integrity issues on kinematic data.