METHOD FOR OBSERVING AND RECORDING THE IDENTITY, POSITION AND MOVEMENT OF ONE OR MORE VESSELS IN SPECIFIC WATERS OR SAILING LINE

A method for automatic and continuous surveillance based on central and/or distributed surveillance of presence, positions, movements and movement pattern of one or more vessels (1) in narrow waters, a sailing lane or where danger of collision with other vessels or other fixed or floating collision risks exist. The vessel emits a sweeping signal (4) that repeatedly hits one or more detectors (5.n) detecting the character of the sweeping signal and the time intervals between the signal hits on the respective detector. The exact position of the vessel and/or movements is mainly calculated on the basis of trigonometric principles, and the vessel identity ("fingerprint") is produced by using sophisticated signal analysis to extract the characteristic signal sequences from the received detection signals which are related to the transmitted radar signal(s) from the vessel(s).