Continuous detection of black holes for moving objects at sea

The main objectives of moving objects queries are to search for objects that either lie in some specific areas (i.e., range queries) or are close to one specific location (i.e., kNN queries). Such queries have been previously studied considering either offline database processes using some index techniques or online approaches where incoming data are processed to answer those queries "on the fly". The research presented in this paper considers hybrid queries applied to historical data as well as streaming data. When considering the specific context of the maritime domain and moving objects at sea, a key issue is to make a difference between covered and non covered areas (i.e., regions from where AIS positioning signals are either received or not received). This leads us to introduce the concept of "Black Holes" query where the objective is to identify regions respectively covered and non covered, this providing useful insights for maritime authorities in charge of the regulation of maritime transportation.