Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MSc)

Department

Geography & Environmental Studies

Program Name/Specialization

Geomatics

Faculty/School

Faculty of Arts

First Advisor

Dr. Steven Roberts

Advisor Role

Mentor

Abstract

Most of the world relies on ships for transportation, shipping, and tourism. Automatic Identification System messages are transmitted from ships and provide a wealth of positional data on these open ocean vessels. This data is being utilized to determine the optimal path for ships, as well as predicting where a ship may be going in the near future. It has only been in the past decade that Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) signals have been easily received with satellites (S-AIS) so there have been few studies that look at using available information and pairing it with the new abundance of ship positional data. This study attempts to use High Frequency (HF) radar data that measures the velocity of surface ocean currents off the West Coast of North America and incorporates North Pacific Automatic Identification Systems data to create a basic prediction model that uses the radar data to refine the positional accuracy of the prediction. Determining the effects of ocean currents on a ship using these data sets allows for later calibration of currently available position prediction models using high frequency radar data. While the study was unable to obtain consistent prediction correlation results the work systematically analyzes inconstancy and limitations of existing S-AIS and HF radar data that is a valuable contribution to the field.

Convocation Year

2019

Convocation Season

Spring

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