“Maritime Domain Awareness and Maritime Fusion Centers” is the title of a paper written by DKI APCSS professors Dr. Deon Canyon and Capt. Jim McMullin for Security Nexus. This article emphasizes the importance of maritime domain awareness (MDA) and the coordinating efforts of maritime fusion centers (MFC) to support those efforts.

Excerpt
The essential mission of a MFC is to strengthen MDA by gathering and analyzing data from multiple sources, fusing it into meaningful information, and disseminating actionable intelligence to operational commanders to directly improve national security, safety, economy, and environment. Not all maritime centers source data broadly enough to make fusion meaningful, and not all attempt to adequately fuse data to extrapolate new intelligence. Some of these agencies only focus on internal monitoring and have little to do with transnational events.

Dr. Deon Canyon and U.S. Navy Capt. Jim McMullin are professors at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. The views expressed in this article are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the DKI APCSS or the United States Government.

Security Nexus is a peer-reviewed, online journal published by the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

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