DASBoot: an annotation toolkit for DAS-based maritime surveillance

Maritime surveillance relies on advanced technologies to ensure the safety and security of national and international waters, particularly in monitoring vessel activities. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) has emerged as a powerful technology for detecting and analyzing underwater acoustic signatures along fiber-optic cables. However, the lack of annotated DAS datasets in maritime contexts, combined with the high dimensionality and unstructured nature of recorded data streams, hinders the deployment of automated solutions that rely on labeled data for vessel detection. This work introduces DASBoot, a novel annotation toolkit designed to enhance maritime surveillance by aligning vessel signatures from DAS data with Automatic Identification System (AIS) messages. Our approach integrates data processing, fusion, and visualization within a cohesive workflow that significantly reduces the cognitive load on analysts while improving the accuracy of vessel identification. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method for dataset annotation and pave the way for future advancements in DAS-based automated maritime surveillance.