Efficacy of passive acoustic monitoring system depends on ability to detect weak signals masked by background noise, among other things. PAM systems used for either real-time mitigation (i.e., commercial PAM systems) or research monitoring purposes are not routinely accompanied by a standardized procedure for predicting detection performance or evaluating the real-time performance of either a human PAM operator or an automated algorithm. no method currently exists to establish ‘miss rate’ of a PAM. This project produced an open-source Signal Injection and Detection Evaluator (SIDE) software module within the PAMGuard software suite of modules that offers a new ability to predict detection performance and document real-time automated detector and human operator effectiveness as a function of distance (i.e., range) between a detector and the sound source.