Xerra Earth Observation Institute principal scientist Dr Dave Kelbe said Xerra was given the grant through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) Covid-19 innovation acceleration fund (CIAF) to support the pandemic response.
It would be used for the delivery of two maritime border protection tools in Xerra’s "Starboard Maritime Intelligence platform", he said.
Starboard was developed with support from the Ministry of Primary Industries, MBIE’s CIAF and Regional Research Institute Initiative, and the French Embassy in New Zealand’s Pacific Fund.
Dr Kelbe said the funding sped up research and development for Starboard, enabling the team to meet the needs of the Government, with the next step being to add crew exchange information to the model.
"We are honoured to be working alongside leading epidemiologists and building relationships with key officials at the Ministry of Health and Customs New Zealand, with hopes that our work will support their extraordinary efforts to secure our maritime borders from cases of Covid-19.
"We look forward to learning more about how the model and the functionality in Starboard can benefit these agencies at an operational level."
The first tool was based on an epidemiological model which looked at ports a ship had visited and the local Covid-19 infection rates for the day it was in port.
"Using these inputs, the mathematical model predicts possible contagion scenarios, such as the risk of a vessel having infected crew on board."
Dr Kelbe works in collaboration with epidemiologists Prof Nick Wilson and Prof Michael Baker from the University of Otago, who have worked estimating the risk of outbreaks of Covid-19 associated with shore leave by merchant ship crews.
Prof Wilson said all arriving ships, and crew, were treated as high risk, regardless of travel history, time at sea and origin of the crew, in order to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 entering through the maritime border.
"In the future, a traffic light approach would allow for a more nuanced approach, where the relative Covid-19 risk of each vessel and its crew is assessed upon arrival, so we can adjust our control measures to suit."
To move to that state, real-time, automated risk analysis was needed to inform decision-making at New Zealand’s ports, he said.
Xerra will also use the funding to conduct new research and development into detecting the unannounced arrival of non-reporting small vessels, or pleasure craft, travelling between the Pacific Islands and New Zealand because traditionally it had been difficult to know how many ships were arriving, when they were expected to arrive, and what their first port of call would be.
Xerra was developing algorithms and using various types of satellite data to predict and detect the location of the ships and their likely arrival time and location so border officials could take appropriate measures.
The Covid-19 automated risk assessment capability is available through Xerra’s Starboard platform, which is at present in beta trials with users from various government agencies and non-governmental organisations from New Zealand and the wider Pacific region.
