Aptomar KystLink

Aptomar KystLink is a maritime situational-awareness platform now sold by Norbit, the Trondheim-based sensor group that absorbed the original Aptomar business and folded its surveillance software into the parent portfolio. The product traces back to 2012, when Aptomar — then an independent Trondheim firm specialising in offshore and coastal monitoring — released KystLink as the shoreside counterpart to its SECurus sensor turret. The core proposition is a common operating picture: one screen that pulls together radar returns, Automatic Identification System tracks, and electro-optical and infrared camera feeds, then layers them on a shared map so an operator can watch a stretch of coast or a cluster of offshore installations without flicking between consoles.

The software’s technical heart is sensor fusion. KystLink ingests radar plots from compact X-band sets — Aptomar’s own SECurus unit is the natural pairing, and Norbit markets both together — alongside AIS messages from standard transponders and video from stabilised EO/IR gimbals mounted on ships, buoys, or coastal masts. Tracks are correlated across the sources so that a radar contact can be matched against its AIS identity if one is broadcast, flagged as unknown if it is not, and slaved to a camera for visual identification. Automatic anomaly alerting is part of the stated feature set: AIS-off vessels, course deviations, and incursions into user-defined zones are intended to raise flags without constant operator attention. The platform runs as client–server software on standard Windows workstations, with the hardware interfaces handled by Aptomar’s own middleware layer.

Norway is the named operator, and the system’s roots lie in the Norwegian offshore and coastal market. Aptomar built its early customer base among North Sea oil and gas operators who used the technology for oil-spill detection and the monitoring of vessel traffic around installations, and the same software stack has moved into coastal surveillance roles with Norwegian maritime authorities. Deployment figures are not publicly disclosed, and specific agency customers tend to be identified in Norbit’s investor material only in general terms.

Within Norbit’s catalogue the product sits alongside the SECurus radar it was designed to feed and the group’s broader sonar and connectivity lines. The pitch is modest by comparison with the large US command-and-control stacks the market now talks about — regional, maritime, Nordic — but it fits a pattern this part of the world has repeated for a decade: civilian hydrography and offshore monitoring expertise quietly repurposed into dual-use coastal defence tools, aimed at the harbour-protection and small-vessel-surveillance work that European navies are rediscovering they need.