The IPATCH project addresses Security Topic SEC-2013.2.4-2: Non-military protection measures for merchant shipping against piracy. The goal of the IPATCH project is three-fold:(1) To perform an in-depth analysis of the legal, ethical, economic and societal implications of existing counter piracy measures.(2) To produce a manual to aid in the usage and further development of counter-piracy measures.(3) To develop an onboard ship automated decision support tool providing the operator with a robust real time threat assessment and mitigation of piracy threats.The analysis performed under (1) will lead to recommendations for the use of countermeasures in a range of scenarios, structured as a manual (2), and development and implementation of a proactive surveillance system forming part of the system developed in (3). The surveillance system will robustly monitor the area around maritime vessels, providing early warning to crew members if piracy threats are detected. A low false alarm rate due to environmental or other innocuous events, combined with high threat detection sensitivity are central ambitions of the project. To achieve these goals, a multispectral sensor suite comprising both passive and active sensors is envisaged, i.e., a system based on radar, visual and thermal sensors. The sensor suite will be complemented with advanced algorithms for information fusion, object detection and classification, and high level modelling of intent and behaviour analysis.The IPATCH project is strongly user-driven and demonstration of the developed surveillance system will be conducted in two different maritime environments. Finally, the IPATCH project will make contributions to evolving standards in detection systems.