Maritime Anomaly Detection in a Real-World Scenario: Ever Given Grounding in the Suez Canal

In this paper we present how automatic maritime anomaly detection tools can be successfully applied in real-world situations such as the major event of the container vessel Ever Given, which grounded in the Suez Canal on March 23rd 2021. The anomaly detector is designed to process the available sequence of Automatic Identification System (AIS) reports, information from ground-based or satellite radar systems if available, and contextual information defining the expected nominal behavior of navigation. A statistical hypothesis testing procedure is sequentially run to decide whether or not a deviation from the nominal behavior happened within a specific time period, for instance two consecutive data points. We show, based on the recorded AIS data from the Ever Given, that the proposed detector could have been triggered and alerted to anomalous behavior fully 19 minutes before the grounding.