Introduction

The Singapore Maritime Crisis Centre (SMCC) was established in 2011 for a Whole-of Government (WoG) approach to detect and deter Maritime Security (MARSEC) threats as early and as far away from Singapore as possible. The SMCC is made up of the National Maritime Sense-making Group (NMSG) and the National Maritime Operations Group (NMOG). Personnel of SMCC are drawn from the national MARSEC agencies comprising the Republic of Singapore Navy, the Singapore Police Force, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, and Singapore Customs.

Enhancing Whole-of-Government Maritime Security Response by Tightening Linkages

Since achieving full operational capability in 2013, the SMCC has been driving the efforts to tightened linkages between the various national MARSEC agencies in key areas of (1) sense-making and threat assessment, (2) doctrine and operations planning, (3) conduct and monitoring of current and future operations, (4) capability development, (5) conduct of training and exercises. SMCC is able to bring the different MARSEC agencies together to socialise each other on the individual agencies' operational structure, processes and procedures. This in turn helps to enhance interoperability between the agencies during planning and operational response, minimising any duplication of efforts and closing any operational gaps in the national MARSEC efforts. 

NMSG. NMSG builds profiles of vessels based on attributes such as their voyage, owners, crew and cargo with data shared by government agencies and stakeholders in the shipping industry. Besides conducting analysis on the collected data, NMSG also works with national agencies to determine if entities linked to the vessels or the vessels themselves display anomalous behaviour, such as suspicious financial transactions and cyber trails. NMSG is also continuously refining threat profiles to monitor existing threat scenarios and deploy data analytics tools to uncover potential MARSEC threats with few tell-tale signs or those of low-probability. These analyses are shared with the various MARSEC agencies so that decisive actions can be taken to neutralise the identified threats. Recently, ICA was cued by NMSG to investigate the occurrence of a crew not only appearing on the entry application of two barter trade craft scheduled to enter Singapore at nearly the same time but also holding different appointments on each vessel. Fortunately, this turned out to be a submissions error by the shipping agent.

NMOG. Besides driving training, building common protocols and conducting exercises to tighten operational responses between the various MARSEC agencies, NMOG has also been leading efforts to review the national MARSEC response framework to close any operational gaps and build a more co-ordinated operational response. In addition to the daily deterrence efforts of the various MARSEC agencies, NMOG has also triggered the stand-up of these operational plans during the conduct of a number of key events in Singapore. In 2015, this included the conduct of SEA Games in June, Singapore's Golden Jubilee celebrations in August and the F1 race in September.

Leveraging on Expert Knowledge from Experienced Officers from National Maritime Security Agencies

Personnel in SMCC comprises senior officers of the five national MARSEC partners like the Republic of Singapore Navy, Singapore Police Force, Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, Immigrations and Checkpoints Authority, and Singapore Customs. This allows the SMCC to draw upon the collective expertise and experience of the personnel from the different agencies. Not only do they bring along their operational knowledge, but the seconded personnel also act as communication nodes to their parent organisation to gather and share information, and coordinate operational responses.

Today, data on more than 200,000 vessels from 38 national partners and 16 non-government stakeholders resides in NMSG's databases.