National Maritime Domain Awareness Centre (NMDA) – UPSC Prelims

National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) centre will be a multi-agency centre.

Navy’s Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) is being converted into NMDA

Information Management and Analysis Centre(IMAC): It was approved by the Defence Acquisition Council in 2012 and it became operational in 2014.

Purpose: IMAC tracks vessels on the high seas and gets data from the coastal radars, white shipping agreements, Automatic Identification Systems(AIS) transponders fitted on merchant ships, air and traffic management systems and global shipping databases.

IMAC is the nodal agency for maritime data fusion set up after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

Nodal Centre: It is also the nodal centre of the National Command Control Communication and Intelligence System(NC3I).

NC3I was established to link the operational Centres and lower echelons of the Navy and the Coast Guard spread across the country’s coastline including island territories.

Location: Gurugram, Haryana.

White Shipping agreements: It refers to exchange of relevant advance information on the identity and movement of commercial non-military merchant vessels.

Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean region(IFC-IOR): It was set up in 2018 within the premises of the IMAC to coordinate with regional countries on maritime safety and security and act as a regional repository of maritime data.

Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka have been integrated into the country’s coastal radar chain network.

India is in talks with Maldives, Myanmar and Bangladesh to set up coastal radar stations as part of efforts to further expand the coastal radar chain network meant to enable real-time monitoring of the high seas for threats.