Rickmers signs 102 vessel satcom deal - Digital Ship

TT he Rickmers Groupis to install broad-band satellite sys-

tems across its fleet ofmore than 100 vessels,after agreeing a deal withthe Telemar Group,through its German sub-sidiary Telemar GmbH.

The contract will fea-ture the delivery andinstallation of a cus-tomised hardware solutionincluding Thrane &Thrane FleetBroadband500 terminals, as perRickmers’ specifications.

Satellite airtime will be

provided throughTelemar’s partner Vizada,until the end of 2014.Telemar also notes that ithas been supportingVizada to co-develop newvalue added services andan enhanced networkapplication platform, to

optimise the use of thecommunications networkon the ships.

The deal is the culmina-tion of a long-term projectwhereby Rickmers hasdecided to pursue a wide-ranging overhaul of itscommunications infra-structure, and introducethe latest IP technologiesto its fleet of ships.

“We started approxi-mately two years ago, withsome testing on some ofour vessels with varioustypes of equipment,”explained Bjoern Sprotte,manager operations,Rickmers Reederei.

“At that time the ideawas to see what the newgeneration of satellite com-munications systems hadto offer. So it’s been quite along preparation periodfor this.”

“We looked at a fewalternatives, looking atwhat we are using forpresent communications

IN THIS ISSUE

June/July 2010

electronics and navigation

software

satcoms60cm C-band VSAT antenna systemlaunched by Schlumberger – 5

EU funding for Alphasatproject confirmed – 6

Iridium makes down-payment on next generation satellite launch – 8 VSAT increased communicationstenfold – China National Offshore Oil Corporation – 14

Teekay to install ABS-NSsoftware package acrossits fleet – 18

Mowinckel and Alpha Shipmanagement go for e-commerce – 22 Modern communications in shipbroking – 24

Maritime IT at Posidonia – Preview – 50Broadband in navigation – Dr Andy Norris – 54

Rickmers signs 102vessel satcom dealThe Hamburg-based Rickmers Group has embarked on a comprehensivecommunications upgrade that will involve installation of FleetBroadband

500 terminals and completely new computer networks on every ship in its 102-strong fleet. Bjoern Sprotte, Rickmers, told Digital Ship

about this revolution in operations

The Rickmers Antwerp (left) and Rickmers Singapore, like the rest of the company’sfleet, will deploy a completely new communications infrastructure under the project.

Photo: Marko Stampehl

Seafarer safety and the role oftechnology – round table discussion

Space-based AIS, LRIT, Piracy,e-Navigation, Technology vsPolitics, and GMDSS – 38

Bergen-based Utkilen AS owns and operates 20 Chemical Tankers equipped with VSAT as the primary communication system.

“Dualog® Connection Suite™ gives me all means to manage our ship-shore communication. There is no need to shop around, it’s all there in one solution,”says IT Manager Sigmund-Tore Grane.

“Dualog® Connection Suite™ is an outsourced management tool supported,

at all levels, by maritime communication experts. The all-in-one concept

“Makes life easier”- Sigmund-Tore Grane, IT-Manager, Utkilen AS

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adds real value to our company, ” adds Grane – a Manager with no need to expand his IT staff.

continued on page 2

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:43

SATCOMS

Digital Ship June/July 2010 page 2

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continued from page 1

and looking at what the future communi-cations might be.”

The new FleetBroadband will replace arange of different existing Inmarsat termi-nals aboard Rickmers’ fleet.

“About half of the fleet were runningInmarsat-B systems, so they need to bereplaced anyway, and the other half wereusing Fleet 77 terminals, a bit moreadvanced but still the bandwidth is quitelimited,” said Mr Sprotte.

“So the satcom systems were reachingthe stage where they needed to beupgraded, but there was also the need tomeet the demand for increasing e-mail communications, and communica-tions for the crews.”

MotivationThe motivation to pursue the projecthas come from a gradual change in theoperations of the company, with the way it keeps in contact with the shipshaving altered dramatically since itinstalled its previous generation of satel-lite systems.

“In the past we had quite a substantialamount of fax being sent, but that hasalmost completely ceased nowadays, it’sall e-mail,” said Mr Sprotte.

“E-mail is now the primary means ofcommunication, where in previous timeswe had faxes, telephone, and so on. Withthe e-mail, we introduced it quite earlycompared to a lot of other companiesmany years ago, but now we had reacheda stage where we felt we needed to updateand upgrade our systems to a system thatwould allow our crews to communicatemore efficiently.”

“We wanted to avoid having the mas-ter, or whoever was in charge of the com-munications, sitting in front of a comput-er or the satcom equipment for hourswaiting for e-mails to download, as it waswith the old systems. It was also impor-tant to add value for our customers,namely the charterers, since we might beable to offer them the benefits of the newinfrastructure as well.”

Another area the company has identi-fied as potentially creating a positivereturn is remote access to IT systemsaboard the ships.

“We wanted to cut down on our travelcosts for IT maintenance, with the othersystems you can have a lot of travel costsdealing with broken hardware, software,planned maintenance and so on. Part of the project was to reduce this,” said Mr Sprotte.

“If you have any problems with the e-mails or whatever, you just log on to thecomputer and can clarify what’s going on.A remote access session may cost a littlebit extra but if you can save on couriercharges, air freight, travel cost, then it’smuch less.”

“It depends on how you configure theremote session, like whether you need acolour screen or can you use black andwhite, and you can avoid fancy extraWindows things. There are lots of options,but if you just have to log on to the com-puter and do a few mouse clicks it will beless than 5MB.”

Offering additional options for crewcommunications was also consideredwhile choosing the new systems, thoughMr Sprotte notes that these aspects of

the project are secondary to the opera-tional aims.

“With a conventional terminal it’s notso easy to fit another handset here or thereand allow the crew to talk to people athome,” he said.

“This also is of interest when you starttalking about the Maritime LabourConvention [by ILO], where you needproper means of communication onboardwhich the crew can use.”

“However, this is not the main target atthe moment, the main target is to improvethe business communications and get thatup and running, but once that’s in placeit’s simple to just add these services, so it’san extra benefit.”

Broadband networkRickmers has already identified a numberof specific areas where it intends to utiliseits new communications capabilities, par-ticularly in increasing the efficiency of itse-mail system and automating chart andweather updates to increase the safety ofthe vessels by providing them with moreaccurate information – however, one ofthe most important factors was to intro-duce a scalable system that would leaveroom for further expansion.

“The communications bandwidthmakes you faster and more efficient, butthe motivation was also there to be able toimplement new services in the future,”said Mr Sprotte.

“Many charterers are now asking formore and more reporting forms, you havemore ISM documentation to be complet-ed, you have planned maintenance sys-tems onboard.”

“With the planned maintenance sys-tem, before you had to send DVDs or CD-ROMs around the globe from the headoffice to update the databases, now youcan easily do it via satellite. You haveupdated information on a daily basis, andthat’s much better – you’re simply more

up to date with what’s happening.”New ISM and crewing applications

have already been earmarked for introduc-tion following the roll-out of the broad-band service, all of which will be com-pletely linked to the vessel.

“With older systems you had to devel-op special ship clients to use with them,but with the new communications youcan forget about that and just connectthem online using an IP channel,” said Mr Sprotte.

“In the end we want the vessel tobecome a remote office location, just like the people working ashore.Communications should not be a barrieranymore.”

The goal of bringing the vessels into theorganisational structure has also led thecompany to broaden the scope of its com-munications upgrade to include the con-struction of a completely new computernetworking infrastructure onboard theships, allowing for better communicationbetween computers on the vessel whilealso being linked into the overall corporatenetwork.

“We will install new networks on all ofthe vessels,” said Mr Sprotte. “With theprevious systems our vessels were diallingin on modems, and we had a couple ofmodems here in the office, whereas withthe new systems they are just users on anetwork, logging on like any other user onshore would do.”

“This requires some extra investment inthe infrastructure ashore too, but it shouldmake things easier as the ships should beable to be maintained as easily as any otheruser can be maintained ashore.”

“On some of the newer vessels we hadcomputer networks on the ships, but on theolder ones we didn’t – we’ll be taking thisopportunity to install networks on 15-yearold vessels now. It’s a big job, but if you dothe right planning then it’s possible.”

Under the terms of the companies’agreement, Telemar has been charged withresponsibility for management of theintroduction of the new vessel networksystems, from design through to installa-tion and implementation.

The networks will be created on a ship-by-ship basis by Telemar based on the par-ticular specifications of each vessel, asGennaro Faella, director of corporate oper-ative coordination and business develop-ment at Telemar, explains.

“At the beginning of the project wereceived from Rickmers the ship plans foreach ship in the fleet,” he told us.

“Together with our technical depart-ment, product and network developers,we studied these plans, and came up withdrawing booklets, including specificationsand instructions, mechanical and electricaldrawings, for each ship.”

“This involves a network on board con-necting six or seven PCs, and several hun-dred metres of cabling. Based on each indi-vidual ship plan we made CAD (computeraided design) drawings and did analysisand assessments on how to constructthe network.”

Extra security for the higher bandwidthsatellite communications systems beingintroduced will also be part of this net-work infrastructure, with elements operat-ing both on ship and on shore.

“It will partly be managed on the ship

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continued on page 4

Design and installation of the newcommunications network has been

managed by Telemar

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SATCOMS NEWS


and partly in our network operations cen-tre in Hamburg,” said Mr Sprotte.

“Whenever the vessels communicatethey will be routed through Hamburg.Things like compression and those thingsare all part of this package, you need theright tools for all of this.”

ImplementationMr Sprotte is confident that operation onthis new infrastructure will proceed rela-tively quickly, given that Rickmersalready has experience in integratingremote sites into its operations.

“It would have taken a lot of work, butwe gained some experience from the trialsand we have quite a modern IT infrastruc-ture anyway since we have a number ofremote locations that are already linkedand connected to our Hamburg office,”he said.

“So we’ve drawn a lot on what we’vealready done, and treat the vessel like just another office. The systems for con-necting other locations to the office areproven, and are working, and we alreadyknow them.”

Installations of the antennas and thenew computer networks will be jointlyperformed by Rickmers and Telemar, with the scheduling dependent on equip-ment availability.

Three vessels having already been fit-ted under the deal, and Mr Sprotte saysthat he expects half of the fleet to beequipped by the end of 2010, with the restof the fleet to receive the equipment dur-ing the first six or seven months of next year.

The installation process is carried out ina number of steps, with crews onboard theships doing as much of the work as possi-ble to help the process to be completedquickly.

“First we ask the crew to do somepreparations, they will receive some otherequipment before they receive the antennaand do some pre-installation. Then theyget the antenna and follow some furthersteps we give them,” said Mr Sprotte.

“When everything is ready from thecrew side we will send some Telemarengineers onboard to make the final con-nections and do the final commissioning.We do as much preparation as possiblewith the crew to avoid idling vessels andso on, and as this reduces the time wehave to send people to the vessels then itpays back in that way.”

“Those engineers will do the networkinstallation and configure the software,that is all done by the suppliers. We’vetold them how we want to connect thevessels to our network on shore and theywill follow the installation procedure todo that.”

The installation procedures have beenorganised by Telemar, as part of theirremit to create these onboard networks,and have included the creation of detailedinstructions as to how the work should becarried out.

“We shared this information withRickmers, with our technicians, and withthe installation teams around the world,and developed the implementation androll-out plan vessel-by-vessel,” saidTelemar’s Mr Faella.

“We issued guidelines explaining whathad to be done and by who. It’s a complex

arrangement, but it’s something we arevery proud of, to deliver this completeintegrated package including the design,the equipment, the network, and all of thesupport and maintenance.”

Speed and efficiency were the key focusfor the Rickmers and Telemar projectteams in their approach to the installa-tions, to minimise disruption to ship operations.

“As we all know, vessels typically onlyhave one or two days in port, so the chal-lenge for Rickmers and ourselves was tooptimise everything and create a processwhere it would be possible to do every-thing in that couple of days,” said MrFaella.

“The crews have to know exactly whatthey have to do, which activities at whatstage, what to do with the different parts of the hardware solution packagethat we have agreed on with Rickmers.That is delivered to the ships around theworld, with the Thrane & Thrane Sailorsatcom units, cables, handsets, and othermaterials.”

“The process is coordinated to avoidany mismatch between the materials andthe teams from different areas and compa-nies that will be involved in installingthem, this is managed by Telemar. Weintervene at the beginning, with thedesign and preparation and creating theinstructions, and then complete the activi-ty onboard in the end.”

Future evolutionIn the long run Rickmers sees this commu-nications project as just the first step in acontinuing evolution of its use of technol-ogy, which it hopes will continue toexpand as more and more of the onboardsystems can be fully integrated into thecorporate network.

Telemar’s Mr Faella says that this con-cept has been integral to the design of theonboard networks that are currently beinginstalled.

“Part of the goal with the cabling is alsoto make sure that Rickmers is what we call‘broadband evolution ready’, so the sys-tem architecture is integrated and scalableto be able to meet future needs of the fleetand the network,” he told us.

Mr Sprotte also notes that Rickmers hasinvested additional resources into the sys-tem with this in mind, to prepare for fur-ther advances in its operations.

“We have not opted for the cheapestterminal, we chose the FB500 instead ofthe FB150 or FB250 terminals which bothoffer lower bandwidth, because that givesus more scope in the future to use the extrabandwidth we will have available,” he said.

“Our idea is to connect other equip-ment to this system, like VDR, likeautomation systems, electronic chart sys-tems, and so on. Then whenever we havea problem with anything we can use thatconnection for maintenance or we can asksomeone to check the system before wesend out a service technician. We want tohave access to everything on the ship.”

“That’s all in the future. At the momentour target is to get the systems replaced onboard, which we are doing, and to get thenew system installed, established andworking. Once that’s done we willstart with the next improvements.” DS

continued from page 2

60cm C-band VSAT launched by Schlumberger

www.slb.com/seaconnect

Schlumberger has announced the launchof a new 60cm C-band VSAT service calledSeaConnect, in what the company isdescribing as a "world first".

The system is initially to be targeted atvessels working in the offshore and oiland gas industries, and will be offered ona 'fixed-fee, unlimited data access' basis.

C-band VSAT antennas have usuallytraditionally been available in large sizes,often in the 2.4m diameter range.

However, Schlumberger says that itsdesign, based on a marine stabilised anten-na, has combined spread spectrum andCDMA technologies to enable the use of60cm equipment, while still assuring com-pliance with the required specifications.

Development of the system focused onC-band as Sclumberger says that it will bemore reliable in rain fade areas such asSouth East Asia, where the SeaConnectservice has been trialled for the last sixmonths on a number of vessels.

The company says that the compactand port-able SeaConnect technology can be dep-loyed on ship in approximate-ly 30 minutes.

"We are very enthusiastic to be thefirst

to offer a 60cm VSAT service on C-Band.I don’t think anyone else is offeringit,” said Paul Khayat, marketing manag-er, Schlumberger Global ConnectivityServices.

“With its high portability, mobility andsmall footprint, the SeaConnect service willenable connectivity to any type of offshorevessel or to any service company on a rig."

“This unique service has been engi-neered to meet the industry’s needs whileproviding vessel owners and service com-panies freedom to have their own securecommunication systems.”

Schlumberger says it has successfullytrialled the SeaConnect service for the lastsix months on a number of vessels operat-ing in South East Asia.

The service is being made availablenow in South East Asia, and will expandto South Asia, Africa and Latin America inthe coming months.

"We will be rolling the service to WestAfrica and Brazil, again two locationswhere rain fade is important and affectsthe Ku-band availability," said Mr Khayat.

Schlumberger says that the long termintention of the 60cm C-band system is toeventually move to global coverage forthe service.

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37

KDDI to offer OpenPort in Japan

www.thrane.com

www.addvaluetech.com

Thrane & Thrane reports that it hasshipped its 10,000th SAILORFleetBroadband terminal to partnerTelemar, while Addvalue Communicationshas also shipped its 1,000th WideyeSkipper 150 FleetBroadband system.

The Thrane milestone has been reachedin less than two and a half years since theFleetBroadband system was firstlaunched, in November 2007, while theFB150 variant has only been on the marketsince the first half of 2009.

Thrane’s 10,000th terminal is to beinstalled aboard a vessel operated by theRickmers Group, based in Germany, as

one of more than 100 FleetBroadband sys-tems that the company will introduceacross its fleet as part of a comprehensivecommunications upgrade (see page 1).

"SAILOR FleetBroadband has struck achord with the maritime communicationsindustry and the end user. The diversity ofthe product portfolio has helped to estab-lish SAILOR as the FleetBroadband termi-nals of choice regardless of the size or typeof vessel," commented Jens Ewerling,product line manager, maritime satcom,Thrane & Thrane.

"The fact that all SAILORFleetBroadband products are designedusing in-depth knowledge gained duringour involvement in the creation of theInmarsat BGAN ground infrastructure

Seadream installs Ship Equip

Digital Ship


www.jotron.com

Jotron Group has announced that its JotronSatCom unit has been integrated as a newproduct group, to be responsible for therelease of new satcom products in 2010.

This is Jotron's fifth product group,joining its Maritime Products, PhontechCommunication Systems, ConsultasMaritime Software and Ground to Air &Coastal Communication divisions.

The main shareholder of the companyis Jotron AS, supported by two partners,Tronrud Engineering AS and Nerasat AS.The management, as well as the mainR&D team, consists mainly of formeremployees of Nera SatCom.

“Our vision is to build a new strongNorwegian maritime satellite communica-tion company after the closedown of theNera SatCom company in 2006," said managing director of Jotron SatCom,

New Jotron Group unit to focus on VSAT development

www.ship-equip.com

Cruise company SeaDreamis to install SEVSAT fromShip Equip on two ships,

the SeaDream I andSeaDream II. The VSAT system consists of

a 1 Mb SCPC (single channel percarrier) duplex connection for each

ship, based on coverage from the T11Nsatellite providing a Ku-band footprintacross the Mediterranean Sea, the north-ern Atlantic and the Caribbean.

Bandwidth for 24 telephone lines willbe included as part of the solution, as well as always-on internet connectivi-ty back to the company's shore offices

partly configured in a MultiprotocolLabel Switching

(MPLS) network.

"To offer a good quality telecommuni-cations service is essential to our busi-ness," said Kjell Sande, director of mar-itime operations at SeaDream.

"It is a key element in providing the‘peace of mind’ that many of our busi-ness passengers only get when theyknow that they can handle businessfrom the cruise ship. The previous solu-tion had shortcomings that made ittough to sell to the guests, it did not pro-vide enough value for money."

"We made the decision to move to Ku-band since Ship Equip could offer anintegrated service on one satellite withhigh bandwidth in the areas we sail."

Ship Equip notes that it has now purchased close to 10 per cent ofthe capacity on the T11N satellite for the provision of services to maritimecustomers.

FleetBroadband growth continues ensures that our terminals can harness thepower of FleetBroadband to providehigh-quality global IP data and voicefunctions, which enhance crew welfareand improve operational efficiency acrossthe board."

Addvalue’s 1,000th Skipper 150 hasbeen delivered to Nordic-IT, Addvalue’sdistribution partner in Hamburg,Germany, and is being installed on theMV Euro Snow, part of the GlobalHanseatic Shipping (GHS) fleet of 15 con-tainer, bulk carrier and Ro-Ro ships.

The airtime is supplied by Inmarsatdistribution partner Otesat-Maritel ofGreece, which also provided airtime serv-ices for the first FB150 installed in Europelast year, for Briese Schiffahrts.

“The installation of the Skipper 150will upgrade the communications capa-

bilities across our fleet, evolving fromInmarsat-B to broadband along with thenew IP gateway solution, 'gate4c'," saidJochen Meyer, technical manager for GHS.

“Intensive testing of this product and aleast-cost routing, compression and fire-wall application developed by mareDataGmbH, proves to perform excellently viaInmarsat FleetBroadband. In addition,‘gate4c’ will interface with our intranetfleet management software."

"IP connectivity will replace traditionaldialup services one by one, as this givesmore flexibility and better rates for thedata transfer. The Skipper 150 did meet allof our criteria, including keeping the proj-ect within the budget.”

Addvalue says that its roll-out of theterminals now represents a 40 per centshare of the global FB150 market.

Ottar Bjåstad.Jotron SatCom is currently primarily

staffed only with management and R&Dresources as it focuses on the develop-ment and industrialisation of a new VSATstabilised antenna product.

This flagship product is expected to bea stabilised Ku-band antenna, which thecompany says will be introduced to themarket during the second half of 2010.

Support and sales functions will be

handled by its mother company Jotron,and the group's global distribution andservice network.

“The Jotron Group sees this as a strategicinvestment and as part of making Jotron amore complete supplier of maritime commu-nication products and systems," said MagnusVold, managing director of Jotron AS.

"The new product group will be closelylinked with the existing product groupsserving the maritime market.”

www.iridium.com

KDDI Corporation has been appointed asan authorised service provider for theIridium OpenPort maritime satellite com-munication service in Japan.

KDDI has secured Japanese producttype approvals and will distribute IridiumOpenPort units and service into theJapanese merchant shipping and commer-cial fishing fleets.

Following this extended relationshipwith KDDI, an Iridium service providersince 2005, Iridium says that it expects tosee strong growth for Iridium OpenPort inthe Japanese maritime satcom market.

This view was echoed by YuzuruTakayama, general manager, MSAT busi-ness solution sales department, KDDI,who commented: “Iridium OpenPort is anexcellent product that meets a growingneed for higher-capacity voice and data intoday’s maritime industry."

"With its multiple independent phone lines,IP-based architecture, scalable data servicesto 128 kbps, and low equipment and usagecosts, Iridium OpenPort is an ideal solutionfor shipping companies and fishing fleets.”

“In addition, Iridium’s global coveragemeans that ships will be in constant touchwherever they sail, even including highPolar Regions.”

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37

SATCOMS NEWS


www.inmarsat.com

Inmarsat has unveiled a complete specifi-cation for its forthcoming handheld satel-lite phone, IsatPhone Pro.

The phone will offer up to 8 hours talktime and up to 100 hours on standby, andbe capable of operating at extreme tem-peratures, from -20˚C to 55˚C.

Inmarsat says that it is the only satellitephone to support Bluetooth, has a GSM-style interface with a colour screen, and hasa larger keypad for easy dialling in gloves.

Voicemail, text and e-mail messagingwill all be available over the standardhandset.

“IsatPhone Pro raises the game in thesatellite phone market,” said HelenStalker, commercial director of globalsatellite phone services at Inmarsat.

“It works in just about any conditions,from rain storms to dust storms, fromtropical humidity to freezing blizzard; ithas a long battery life you can rely onwhen you’re in the middle of nowhere; atotally reliable global network connectionwith clear voice quality; and it’s some-thing that anyone can pick up and use.”

Inmarsat has confirmed that the sug-gested retail price for IsatPhone Pro isUS$699, although pricing promotions areexpected to bring the end-user price toUS$500-600. Retail airtime rates will be ataround US$1 per minute.

Korea Telecom, Station 711 and RRSathave also recently been confirmed as dis-tribution partners for IsatPhone Pro, joining companies like AST, ChinaTelecom, Evosat, MCN, MVS, NetworkInnovations, NSSL, Satcom Global,Singtel, Stratos and Vizada.

The new phone is planned for launch inJune 2010.

www.globalstar.com

Globalstar has announced a timetable ofthe key steps leading up to the launch ofits second-generation satellite constella-tion, which it says will take place later this year.

Globalstar says that the launch of thesatellite constellation would allow thecompany to secure its space segmentbeyond the year 2025.

Globalstar also commented, in a state-ment, that the deployment of the constel-lation would create "up to a five-year com-petitive advantage over [Globalstar's] pri-mary mobile satellite services (MSS) com-petitor, which still has not yet named amanufacturer for its second-generationsatellites."

While not explicitly named, the com-petitor being referred to is most probably

Iridium, which is currently working onthe development of its own second-gener-ation satellite constellation, IridiumNEXT.

The planning phase for Globalstar'snew constellation began in 2005, with thecompany signing an agreement with satel-lite manufacturer Alcatel Alenia Space(now Thales Alenia Space) in 2006.

Since then Globalstar has overcome anumber of operational challenges andmade some important advances, includinga $738 million financing arrangementagreed in 2009 to help fund the construc-tion of the 24-satellite network.

In January 2010, Globalstar announcedthat the first 90-day window to launch sixGlobalstar second-generation satelliteswill open on July 5, 2010. The launch of thenew satellites is expected in the Septemberor early October timeframe, with the actu-

al launch date to be announced in theupcoming months.

The satellites will be launched from theBaikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanusing a Soyuz launch vehicle. Globalstarexpects to conduct four launches of sixsatellites each using the Soyuz, which hasbeen used to successfully launchGlobalstar satellites on eight previousoccasions.

The 24 new second-generation satelliteswill be integrated with eight first-genera-tion satellites that were launched in 2007.

As such, the company's stated timelinegoing forward includes an expected satel-lite delivery announcement and launchvehicle readiness review in July, followedby an announcement of the launch date inAugust.

"While there are some critical activitiesahead of us, from a pure timeline perspec-tive we're about 95 per cent of the waythrough the process of planning, design-ing, manufacturing and launching the firstof our new satellites," said Tony Navarra,president, global operations forGlobalstar.

"Our committed team of highly skilledpartners and employees continue to deliv-er on-time and on-budget, giving us theconfidence today to announce the remain-ing milestones that will take us to the fin-ish line."

"Although it may seem overwhelmingto be so close to delivering a state-of-the-art network that will secure the Globalstarspace segment for the next 15 years, weare simply continuing to execute on adetailed plan that we began to implementmore than five years ago."

Once the constellation is fullydeployed, the new constellation andground network are designed to providedata speeds of up to 256 kbps in an inter-net protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS)configuration.Globalstar says that its new satellites will be launched during the second half of 2010

Globalstar announces satellite launch timetable

www.esa.int

www.inmarsat.co.uk

The Alphasat telecoms satellite, to belaunched in 2012, is to be backed by up to€225 million in funding from the EU'sRisk-sharing Finance Facility (RSFF),according to reports from the EuropeanInvestment Bank (EIB).

The RSFF has been created by EIB andthe European Commission to assist in therealisation of the satellite project, a jointproject between the European SpaceAgency (ESA) and Inmarsat.

The prototype Alphasat satellite will bethe first satellite to be launched using anext generation satellite ‘bus’ that hasbeen developed by the ESA and theFrench agency CNES, and will be avail-able for maritime, aeronautical and landmobile users.

The system will be available under an‘open access’ policy to research organisa-tions, initially housing four technologicaldemonstration payloads developed byEuropean universities, industry and space

organisations for aeronautical, land andmaritime research.

The EIB is providing the up to €225 mil-lion in funding to Inmarsat as a loan to beused for the construction and launch ofthe satellite, expected to cost around €598million in total.

The RSFF loan is backed by funds fromthe European Union’s 7th research frame-work programme (which has a €1 billionbudget) and EIB’s own resources (alsoapproximately €1 billion).

ESA is contributing around €230 mil-lion to the project through the provision ofthe Alphabus platform.

“This satellite will put European indus-try in a leading position in this segmentand could bring significant spill-overeffects for research and innovation inEurope,” said EIB president, PhilippeMaystadt.

“This is the type of investment the EIBintends to finance further under theEurope 2020 initiative.”

EU Research, Innovation and ScienceCommissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn,also commented: “[Alphasat] will help

EU confirms funding for Alphasat project

Inmarsat outlineshandheld phone

specs

Europe's space industry to innovate, contribute to jobs in the knowledge economy and bring much-needed servic-

es to people in remote regions. It will be a symbol of the Europe 2020 Strategyin orbit."

The construction and launch of Alphasat is expected to cost almost €600 million

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37

SATCOMS NEWS


www.shipequip.no

Ship Equip has released details of a recentcustomer survey, revealing that the aver-age monthly data traffic for the 770 shipsusing its VSAT systems has increased to19.7 gigabytes per ship per month, as ofApril 2010.

This figure has more than doubledcompared to a similar survey a year previ-ously, when an average figure of 9.1 giga-bytes per ship per month was reported inApril 2009.

Ship Equip notes that the typicalmonthly bill for its customers is about$3,500, meaning that the price per

megabyte of 19.7 gigabytes of trafficworks out at approximately $0.175, or sev-enteen and a half cents.

The company says that, although it hasseen a recent shift in customer requeststowards 256 kbps bandwidth speeds, andhas a number of contracts that go intomegabits, the largest proportion of its cus-tomers have 128-128 kbps contracts andstill exchange 10 to 15 gigabytes of dataper month.

"A few years ago customers were morecautious and only deployed a small num-ber of PCs when the SEVSAT satellitecommunication was installed - one in thewheelhouse, one in the machine room and

maybe one in the mess," said FrankBjoernsen, Ship Equip fleet manager.

"This has changed for a number of rea-sons. Many customers are installing WiFinetworks and allow a higher number ofPCs on board, both for operational andpersonal use."

"One reason is they have deployed on-board IT systems that require to be onlinewith the land office. Problem solving bysending pictures of damaged equipmentto vendors has become a popular way ofgetting acceptance of the problem and aquick response from the suppliers. Othersfile applications for port access and com-plete procedures to comply with environ-mental requirements before enteringrestricted waters."

Mr Bjoernsen, responsible for maintain-ing the operational capacity of the ShipEquip network, says that shipboard net-works can be split into operational andcrew networks with separate bandwidthallocations, to ensure bandwidth is avail-able for operational use.

"A lot of ships have limited the tele-phone to operational use and let the crewpay for their personal use through the pre-paid crew calling solution from ShipEquip," said Mr Bjoernsen. "That way themonthly cost for all practical purposesstays within a narrow window."

"We monitor bandwidth usage, andwhen the utilisation reaches 70 per centwithin a segment of ships using SEVSATsatellite broadband we add more band-width to always have a margin for growth

and to handle peaks. After all, we want tomake sure customers get what they arepaying for."

In other news, Ship Equip also reportsthat it has launched new websites in theChinese, Spanish and Russian languages,which will operate in parallel with thecompany's English version.

The company sees the provision ofinformation in these languages as a steptowards growing its SEVSAT customerbase in international markets.

The choice of languages has been influ-enced by the multi-national nature of thecrew on board most commercial vessels,with high numbers of seafarers comingfrom Asian and Eastern European coun-tries.

Ship Equip says that, since it is provid-ing VSAT communication links for thesecrews, it has become important to provideinformation in their native language aboutthe product the crews use on a daily basis.

In addition, the company says that italso sees countries like Spain, Portugal,and other South American and Americancountries as growing areas in the shippingmarket, where it sees it as important tocommunicate in the native language.

New value added services are also soonto be made available through theMySEVSAT customer portal, such as cred-it card purchasing for crew calling time, inmultiple languages.

Content and news added to the Englishwebsite is expected to be available within3 days in all languages.

Frank Bjoernsen, Ship Equip, manages bandwidth utilisation fromthe company's Network Operations Centre

www.expand.com

Expand Networks reports that it hassupplied its WAN optimisation technolo-gy to support satellite communicationservices for Scripps Institution ofOceanography at the University ofCalifornia, San Diego, operator of one ofthe largest US academic fleets.

Expand’s Accelerators are beingdeployed to manage critical applicationsand communications over the low band-width – high latency satellite linksbetween the ships and shore.

The system combines integrated SpaceCommunication Protocol Standards(SCPS) with compression and byte-levelcaching.

“Our research vessels need to squeezeevery bit of bandwidth out of those fixedsatellite links," said Steve Foley, networkengineer at the Institute of Geophysicsand Planetary Physics at ScrippsOceanography.

"The more data we can send home, thebetter. The more satellite images, phonecalls, support, etc. that the scientists on theship can get from shore, the better theycan do their science.”

“Satellite is notoriously problematic forbandwidth acceleration, and we’dresigned ourselves to sufficing with whatwe had. It was a case of ‘if only networkaccelerators weren’t so ineffective over

satellite links.’ Then we found Expand.”Scripps says that it evaluated a number

of different optimisation options for itscommunications network before decidingto implement this particular system.

“We found that Expand was the onlyone that had the features geared towardsmaking our low-bandwidth satellites use-ful," said Mr Foley.

"Our issues aren’t about running CIFSacross our high delay links, but we reallycare about things like UDP acceleration,SCPS, and auto fragmentation. We werealso impressed when Expand didn’t lookat us funny when we said we wanted toput their gear on ships! To them it was the norm.”

Initial roll-out was performed aboardScripps’ research vessel Roger Revelle andWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution’svessel, Atlantis.

“Non-IT folks have been receivingaccelerators straight from Expand, pop-ping them in the ship’s equipment racks,setting IP addresses, then walking awaywhile we do the rest remotely," said MrFoley.

"The amount of management controlwe have from shore is very impressive.Now, with the savings in bandwidth ourExpand Accelerators are paying for them-selves within nine to 18 months. We esti-mate we are saving over $600 per monthfor each of our large global ships.”

www.iridium.com

Iridium Communications reports that ithas made a deposit of $19 million with anunnamed launch services provider to"secure the terms and conditions" associat-ed with its next generation satellite con-stellation, Iridium NEXT.

The company broke the news in a state-ment to the US Securities and ExchangeCommission, noting that the deposit isfully refundable "if financing is notsecured or if a full scale development con-tract for the design and manufacture of theIridium NEXT satellites is not signed with-in 12 months."

The Iridium NEXT constellation of 66low Earth orbit satellites is expected tocost $2.7 billion between now and 2016,the company confirmed.

The list of potential partners to con-struct the network currently stands at two,with Lockheed Martin of the United Statesand Thales Alenia Space of France theremaining bidders left in the process.Iridium has indicated that it expects toname a final contractor shortly.

In other news, Iridium has alsoannounced that its new satellite shortburst data (SBD) transceiver is ready formarket one month ahead of schedule, andthat the company is accepting orders.

The Iridium 9602 SBD transceiver,smaller and lighter than the company’s

previous model, is a two-way devicedesigned to be embedded into partner-developed products and systems thatenable remote M2M (Machine-to-Machine) asset tracking and monitoring.

The launch marks the culmination of atwo year R&D collaboration amongIridium and its technical partners, accord-ing to the company.

Already planned Iridium 9602-basedapplications include fleet managementapplications, enterprise logistics and sup-ply-chain visibility.

“The [new unit] provides our partnersflexibility to serve new markets that requirea smaller, lighter transceiver that is moreeasily integrated into their technology andis more affordable to their end-user cus-tomers,” said Joel Thompson, vice presi-dent of product management at Iridium.

Average SEVSAT ship data traffic tops 19GB

Optimisation system deployed on US research vessels

Iridium makes down payment on satellite launch

Iridium NEXT will be comprised of 66 satellites

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37

where to next?

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:37


SATCOMS NEWS

www.caprock.com

CapRock has secured a 60-month fleetcontract with Diamlemos ShippingCorporation of Greece to install nine C-band VSAT systems, in cooperation withits Greek partner Setel.

CapRock notes that this is the fifthVSAT contract it has signed in the Greekmarket in the last six months.

The nine vessels from Diamlemos' bulkcarrier and oil tanker fleet require globalcoverage for their multi-region traderoutes, hence the requirement forCapRock's SeaAccess C-band services.

“Gaining trust from such dominantGreek shipping companies is testament tothe reliability and benefits delivered withour SeaAccess service,” said SeaAccess busi-ness development executive Claus Høyer.

“We look forward to developing newrelationships in the Greek market."

"Setel’s services go hand-in-hand withCapRock’s and reinforce the total serviceofferings of both companies. Setel’sIntelligent Vessel features an integratedbundle of equipment, software and quali-ty services that enable shipping compa-nies to respond to the unique challenges of

the demanding maritime industry."This new Greek deal has followed

quickly on the back of news fromCapRock announcing the launch of a new'Crew Infotainment' service for the mar-itime industry, that will incorporate televi-sion, music and gaming.

The system is operated via a consoli-dated media console that allows access toa range of electronic content for entertain-ment, as well as allowing companies todisseminate information on industry prac-tices and technologies to remote employ-ees and offer new options in corporatetraining and certification courses.

Similar to the interface and menusfound in hotel television systems, usersaccess networked and on-demand contentthrough a television graphical interfaceand remote control.

The IP-based solution is scalable andmodular, and contains functionality notfound in traditional analogue solutionssuch as trick-play capabilities – pause, fastforward, rewind and seek – quick channelchanging, closed caption options andinteractive programme guides for live TV.

CapRock also says that the system fea-tures improved remote troubleshooting

capabilities and fewer equipment require-ments than analogue, to reduce mainte-nance and operational costs, and doesn’trequire users to switch out equipmentwhen moving into a new region.

The first crew infotainment service con-tract has already been signed, with an off-shore drilling contractor.

“Our Crew Infotainment solution is thefirst of its kind for the markets we serve,”said CapRock director of product manage-ment and marketing, Rohit Chhabra.

“We are one of the first licensedproviders to offer video on demand contentto the offshore energy market that allowscustomers to legally view digital content.”

“Whether it’s for the crew onboard anoffshore drilling vessel or cargo ship oreven for personnel stationed at a remotecamp, employees can now complete amandatory safety training class, watch amovie in their downtime or record theirfavourite television show during workinghours.”

www.inmarsat.com

Inmarsat director of maritime businessPiers Cunningham has resigned from theglobal satellite communications company,with a successor yet to be chosen to fill the position.

Mr Cunningham has left the businessafter nine years for personal reasons, and is set to join maritime communica-tions company SatComms Australia, in Queensland, as executive director inJuly 2010.

While the post of maritime director atInmarsat is now vacant (at the time of writ-ing), the company says that it is currentlyactively looking for a successor, and that itexpects to announce a replacement shortly.

Mr Cunningham joined Inmarsat as abusiness development manager in 2001,

and was promoted to head of maritimebusiness in 2004 before becoming directorof maritime business shortly afterwards.

One of the focal points of his tenure ashead of maritime at the company was thelaunch of the three FleetBroadband servic-es, FB500, FB250 and FB150.

Activation levels for these services havenow reached approximately 10,000 termi-nals in total, since the first variants wereinitially launched at the end of 2007.

In other news, Inmarsat has alsoannounced a reorganisation plan underwhich the ownership of Stratos GlobalCorporation and its subsidiaries will betransferred within the Inmarsat group.

Inmarsat previously completed theacquisition of the Stratos company, inApril 2009, under the terms of a calloption originally negotiated in the first quarter of 2007 with Canadianinvestment company CommunicationsInvestment Partners (CIP).

Under the reorganisation plan Stratoswill repay all of its outstanding indebted-ness backed by Inmarsat funding, andbecome an indirect wholly-owned sub-sidiary of Inmarsat.

At the end of December 2009, Stratoshad outstanding long-term debt com-prising $209.3 million and $150 millionthrough various respective financingfacilities.

Stratos will use available cash resourcesand financing from Inmarsat to fund therepayments, with Inmarsat confirmingthat it will use its own available liquidityin this regard. At the end of December2009, Inmarsat had available liquidity of$436 million.

As a result of the reorganisation, to becompleted in June, Stratos will becomesubject to the terms of Inmarsat's out-standing debt.

Diamlemos Shipping will install nine C-band VSAT systems

Inmarsat maritime director resigns GSE and Ocens in partnership deal

Fifth Greek shipping company signs for CapRock VSAT

Piers Cunningham has left Inmarsat, withthe post of director of maritime now vacant

www.gsat.us

www.ocens.com

Global Satellite Engineering (GSE) andOcens data services have agreed a part-nership whereby Ocens will use GSE’sSatCollect software to reduce in-boundcall expenditure for satellite phone usage,via Inmarsat and Iridium networks.

SatCollect allows satellite phone usersto select one or more local phone numbersin 41 different countries that will termi-nate to their satellite phone.

SatCollect customers will receive calls via a local number that has been forwarded from their satellite phone.They will only be charged the local ratefor that particular country to receive acall, as opposed to paying the satellite

long-distance rate.Voice or fax over IP services are also

available as an option on GSE’s own cus-tomised terminal, which plugs into theinternet. The terminal integrates with theworldwide SatCollect platform and can beprogrammed with its own local number.

Real time billing and reporting areavailable, with bills able to be prepaid orpost paid. Activation is done online.

“We wanted an easy, flexible and cost-effective means of helping our customersaddress a recurring challenge...that isdialling Iridium and Inmarsat phones,"said Mark Freeberg, CEO of Ocens.

"SatCollect provides the most intuitivesolution to this problem...simply dial alocal number like you would to call theneighbours or the local pizza delivery."

www.livewire-connections.com

Livewire Connections has added 'SpendControl' and 'DNS Blocking' as part of thelatest software upgrade on the company'scommunications management system, theAccess Controller.

“Users can be unaware that they areroaming or have an open data session andcan soon find themselves using high vol-umes of data” said James Ashworth, com-mercial director of Livewire Connections.

"Charges can accumulate rapidly, withno knowledge to the user until the invoiceis received. We developed the SpendControl feature to directly tackle this andallow the user to control their off-vesselcommunication costs."

The system helps with cost control bysetting alerts and incorporating data limits

and firewalls, controlled through theAccess Controller unit.

These limits can be set either per call,per day or per month and the user canalert, block or drop the call as required.This feature will come as a free upgradeon existing Access Controllers and as astandard feature on all new units.

In conjunction with this, the 'DNSBlocking' system offers additional securityand can prevent heavy data use byrestricting the use of bandwidth hungrywebsites such as Facebook, You Tube andWindows updates, which will run in thebackground unless firewalled.

The Access Controller can manage upto 10 off-vessel communications devicesincluding FleetBroadband, VSAT, IridiumOpenPort, off-vessel Wi-Fi and GSM, via aGraphical User Interface (GUI).

Access Controller incorporates newcomms management tools

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:38

All three v-Series models are three-axisstabilised, and support a multi-band LNB(low-noise block converter), used forVSAT beam switching.

Digital Ship


www.marlink.com

Marlink is to incorporate the ComtechVipersat bandwidth and capacity man-agement platform into its Sealink VSATsolution.

The company says that the integration ofthe Vipersat technology will provide arange of enhanced features, including effi-cient management of bandwidth allocationbetween vessels, and global automaticroaming between C-band coverage spots.

"The integration of the Vipersat tech-nology to our Sealink solution makesMarlink the only provider of maritimesatellite communications to offer bothVipersat and Vados platforms," said ToreMorten Olsen, CEO, Marlink.

The new Vipersat technology enablesthe VSAT system to allocate bandwidth ondemand, particularly useful for customersthat operate multiple vessels within onebandwidth pool per satellite beam.

Where some vessels within the band-width pool do not require full bandwidthcapacity, Vipersat helps to reallocate thespare capacity to other vessels in the pool.This provides those other vessels withadditional bandwidth and ensures effi-cient use of bandwidth across the fleet.

With the global automatic roaming fea-ture a vessel heading towards the outer

limit of coverage will be automaticallyprepared by the Vipersat system to switchto a new satellite beam.

When the vessel reaches the positionwhich is determined for satellite beamswitch, the system automatically switchesto the next satellite, eliminating the needfor manual intervention from the crewonboard. No service interruption shouldoccur during switching.

In other news, Marlink also reports thatit is launching a new reduced cost "entry-level" VSAT service, called @SEAdirect, toadd to its existing offerings.

This service will provide multiple datarates of up to 1024/256 kbps, offeringinternet, e-mail, and voice capability forincreased operational efficiency and crewcommunication at sea.

Marlink also says that it will provideleased hardware options for companiesthat would prefer such an arrangement fortheir installations.

This entry-level service will use thesame antenna system as Marlink'sWaveCall VSAT solution, so companiesthat install the @SEAdirect system can eas-ily upgrade to the WaveCall service, with-out any modifications to the hardware, ifthey so wish.

WaveCall is Marlink's multi-regionalKu-band service.

www.intellian.com

Intellian reports that it has completedwork on preparing its v60 maritime satel-lite VSAT antenna system for validationfor use with the Eutelsat satellite network.

The Intellian v60 is a 60-centimetreKu-band, three-axis stabilised VSATantenna system, capable of receivingSCPC, MCPC, TDMA or spread spectrumtransmissions.

The v60 is the smallest VSAT v-Seriesantenna available from the company,offering service in the -10 degrees to +100degrees elevation range.

The series also includes two addition-al models, the 1.05-metre v110 and the 1.25-metre v130, though these anten-nas were not part of this particular validation process.

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Marlink to add Vipersat to C-band VSAT service

Intellian 60-cm VSAT gets Eutelsat validation

The 60cm antenna is Intellian’s smallest Ku-band system

Marlink has been certified as a 'GoldPartner' by Inmarsat under its PartnerAccreditation Programme. The companieshave worked together for more than 30years in delivering satellite communica-tion services.

Station 711 has been appointed byInmarsat as a distribution partner for itsGlobal Satellite Phone Services (GSPS), tobe launched in June 2010. Station 711 isexpected to offer the IsatPhone Pro in thesecond half of 2010.

Skymira has launched 'Skymira

Blog', an information source providinganswers and opinions on effective remoteinformation systems. Initial posts willhighlight topics including examples of 400per cent productivity gains from remotemonitoring systems, and best practices toavoid excessive satellite charges.

www.marlink.comwww.inmarsat.comwww.station711.comwww.skymira.com/skymira-blog

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:53


SATCOMS NEWS

www.mtnsat.com

MTN Satellite Communications (MTN)has been selected to provide VSAT servic-es for Singapore-based Goodwood ShipManagement and Fred.Olsen CruiseLines, in two separate deals.

For Goodwood MTN will initiallyinstall C-band antennas and below-deckequipment on three Ore/Bulk/Oil (OBO)ships, and one capesize bulker managedby the company.

The vessels are to be fitted with fourseparate phone lines for crew calling, aswell as computer stations for e-mail andinternet access.

“We chose MTN because of their globalC-band coverage and reliable networkbacked by responsive worldwide service,”said Captain Ashok Sabnis, managingdirector, Goodwood Ship Management.

“MTN’s flat-rate, continuously avail-able internet connection provides themost cost-effective solution for our busi-ness and will achieve significant costsavings compared with pay-as-you-gosatellite services.”

The VSAT will be used for all ship oper-ations and remote management communi-cations, with the contract calling for a guar-anteed minimum continuously availablebandwidth of 64 kbps, with maximumbandwidth of 128 kbps when needed.

“Goodwood joins the growing numberof fleet operators switching to MTN VSATservices,” said Bradford Briggs, senior vice

president and general manager, MTNcommercial shipping and energy services.

“Our committed information rate(CIR) service plans ensure that the shipwill always have access to sufficientbandwidth to meet its communicationrequirements.”

Fred.Olsen Cruise Lines, based inNorway, is also to outfit its entire fleet ofships with VSAT from MTN.

The Balmoral, Boudicca, Black Watch,and Braemar will be provided with VSAT broadband connectivity, as well asservices such as OceanPhone calling,StreamXcel, a bandwidth optimisationservice, toll-free inbound line diallingservice for passengers and crew, andcredit card processing.

Installations on the Black Watch havebeen completed, with scheduled rolloutsfor the rest of the fleet expected over thenext few months.

“At Fred.Olsen, we strive to offer ourpassengers reliable, high-quality prod-ucts and services,” said Ian Watson,cruise systems manager for Fred.OlsenCruise Lines.

“MTN provides superior services withfaster connectivity, excellent quality ofcommunications, and unmatched servicesupport throughout the globe. We are con-fident that this new service will totally sat-isfy the requirements of our passengerswherever they are cruising.”

In other news, MTN has alsoannounced the opening of a new

European satellite teleport in Santander,Spain, as a joint venture with ERZIATechnologies.

The teleport will serve as a centralisedgateway for MTN’s VSAT communica-tions with coverage over the Americas,Europe, and Asia.

The facility will be one of the first in theworld to provide C- and Ku-band com-mercial service as well as secure X-bandservice for government customers at a sin-gle location, according to Richard Hadsall,chief technology officer, MTN.

“The Santander teleport will provide a

significant improvement in network effi-ciency, reliability, and customer serviceaugmenting our worldwide infrastructureof redundant teleports and dedicated fibreoptic links,” said Mr Hadsall.

“It will have a fully manned 24/7 net-work operations centre providingEuropean time zone coverage and locallanguage operators.”

As part of the joint venture ERZIA isalso establishing a service centre and spareparts depot at Santander to provide ship-board technical support and maintenancefor MTN-equipped ships visiting the port.

www.otesat-maritel.com

Otesat-Maritel has launched a new value-added service for its satellite communica-tions customers, for monitoring and con-trolling satcom traffic.

The ‘Usage Monitoring and Control’tool is to be used with the InmarsatFleetBroadband service, and consists ofe-mail alert and auto-suspend applica-tions which provide the user with theability to set monthly thresholds on eachactivated SIM card and be informedand/or suspend the card when reachingthese thresholds.

The e-mail alerts can be set to activatewhen reaching a monthly threshold onimplied, non-implied, or all services ofstandard plans or allowance package rateplans, to be sent to the e-mail addressesdefined by the user.

The SIM card can also be automaticallysuspended when these thresholds havebeen reached, with the shipping companyreceiving an e-mail informing them of thecommencement of the suspension atdefined e-mail addresses.

A suspended SIM card cannot thenpass traffic and will be reactivated only atthe customer’s request.

VSAT for Goodwood and Fred.Olsen Cruise Lines

MTN’s new European teleport, a joint venture with ERZIA Technologies

www.sam-electronics.de

SAM Electronics has introduced SAMConnectNet, a new communication networking system for ship-to-shore communications.

SAM says that the goal of the system isto merge vessel communication systemsinto complete enterprise-wide IT net-works, helping to optimise supply chainsand provide online reporting capabilitiesfor monitoring purposes.

The SAM ConnectNet system aims toseamlessly combine wireless LANs,2G/3G mobile networks and satellite services such as Inmarsat, Iridium and

VSAT into one system. Wireless port services will also be a

feature of the service, to provide broad-band connectivity of between 6 and 100Mbps while a vessel is berthed in applica-ble ports.

Integrated capabilities for telephony,e-mail and messaging services will beincluded with SAM ConnectNet, in addi-tion to file and data synchronisation.

SAM says that it also expects to offeraudio, video and information ondemand services as the system is rolledout to the market, including chartupdates, telemedicine and remote ITmanagement. Otesat launches satcom

management tools

Communications service introduced by SAM

Grimaldi extends GSM contractwww.mcp.com

Naples-based Grimaldi Group, operatorof Grimaldi Lines and Minoan Lines ferryservices, has extended its existing dealwith Maritime Communications Partner(MCP) to provide GSM and GPRS wirelessmobile services and systems on the MVCruise Olympia and the MV Florencia.

The contract includes the delivery ofnetwork equipment and services, engineer-ing and product management, networkdesign, system integration and operations.

“Grimaldi has been looking to round

out its passenger service package to gowith their fast and punctual ships,” saidBernt Fanghol, MCP’s CMO and VP salesand marketing.

“The addition of mobile communica-tions represents a true step up. While theproducts from MCP can provide an extraprofit stream for Grimaldi, the companyis much more concerned with providing a full range of passenger value-addedservices.”

This agreement represents the fifth dealthat MCP has agreed to provide mobileservices in the Italian maritime market.

Wireless hot spots from SeaVsatwww.seavsat.com

SeaVsat has released a new 'Hot Spot on board' system designed to make iteasier to access the internet whileonboard ship.

The system offers what the companycalls "controlled access" to a wirelessWLAN network, which the crew can thenconnect to using their own mobile devicesand laptops.

An unlimited number of users can log-

on to the service, and will not require anyadditional software to be installed. A nor-mal PC-based system running Windows is required.

'Hot Spot on board' can be personalisedwith a company's own logo as well as cus-tomised messages for the crew to receivewhen logging in.

The wireless service connects toSeaVsat's VSAT offering, based on DVB-S2/RCS technology, in Ku-band orC-band.

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:53

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p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:53


SATCOMS

Chinese oil and gas company CNOOC has seen its data traffic rocket since it began installing VSAT systems. The company now has dozens of installations completed, and intends to double this number in the near future

as roll-out continues across the fleet. Digital Ship spoke to Wujian Zhang about how CNOOC uses VSAT

VSAT increased our communications tenfold – CNOOC

CC hina National Offshore Oil Corpo-ration, or CNOOC, is China'slargest producer of offshore crude

oil and natural gas, and one of the largestindependent oil and gas exploration andproduction companies in the world.

The company operates a fleet of vary-ing types of vessels in pursuance of theseactivities, and has recently embarked on acommunications upgrade programmeaimed at introducing always-on satellitelinks between the ships and the shore.

CNOOC decided that it wanted tomove away from pay-per-megabyte sys-tems to a fixed monthly fee arrangement,to remove limitations on its use of theonboard satellite systems and introducenew applications that could change theway it does business.

The resulting increase in the communi-cations traffic between CNOOC ships andits bases on shore has been enormous,explains Wujian Zhang, senior engineerand general manager of CNOOC sub-sidiary Bohai Oil Communication & ITCompany.

“Following recent developments inhigh speed broadband satellite communi-cation systems, and the ever increasingdemand for broadband data links formodern business applications, CNOOChas started shifting to the use of stabilisedmaritime VSAT solutions based on OrbitVSAT systems,” he told us.

“The passage to VSAT has allowed theuse of many new high bandwidth applica-tions, and the flat rate service payment hasincreased the use of the communicationlink tenfold.”

“Now that VSAT is available and theservice is based on flat monthly rates weare no longer referring to the ‘total num-ber of megabits used’, but rather to theinstantaneous or average data rates(Mbps). We are currently using 128 to2Mbps links and expect these limitationsto continue to increase in the future.”

As Mr Zhang noted, CNOOC has part-nered with VSAT provider Orbit in thisupgrade programme, which supplied arange of its OrSat antennas to CNOOC,mainly consisting of Ku-band systems.

The relationship between the two com-panies goes back to 2007, when CNOOCbegan its evaluation of various satcomalternatives to see how it could best meetits requirements.

The outcome of this process led thecompany to choose Orbit’s 1.28m radomediameter Ku-band antenna as its maincommunications system, while it alsodecided to install a number of TVROantennas in certain cases.

The Orbit systems have been approvedby satellite operators Eutelsat, Anatel andIntelsat for use with their satellite net-works, removing the need to individuallyverify the RF performance of the VSATprior to entering into operation in theircoverage areas.

CNOOC is now in the process of rollingout these systems to its entire fleet, replac-ing the different generations of existingInmarsat systems onboard the ships.

“To date, we have installed dozens ofOrSat VSAT systems on a variety of ves-sels, including drilling ships, social sup-port vessels, a geological exploration ship,

floating crane vessels, and a pipe layingvessel,” said Mr Zhang.

“These systems are used for broadbandsatellite communication and in this respectare replacing the legacy Inmarsat systemsthat are of much lower throughput.”

“Originally CNOOC used Inmarsat serv-ices, that were the main commercially avail-able satellite based services. We started withInmarsat–A and –B, the original Inmarsatservices that offered analogue voice andtelex services as well as ‘high speed’ dataservices of up to 64 kbps and 128 kbpsrespectively, and moved on to Inmarsat-C,Mini-M and Fleet that are still in use.”

Mr Zhang also notes that he has beenpleased with the straightforward nature ofthe installation process, and that the com-pany has not had any major issues inrolling out the VSAT systems to the ships.

“We do not have any particular diffi-culty installing the VSAT systems, theyare designed to allow very simple andstraightforward installation, almost plug-and-play,” he said.

“They all come with automatic satellitesearch and lock process, all we have to dois to select the satellite in the menu and thesystem will find and lock up to the satelliteautomatically.”

“We usually do not even use back upfor these systems, due to their high avail-ability and low failure rate.”

Israel Adan, executive VP, sales andmarketing for Orbit, notes that CNOOC hasbeen very much involved in making surethat the installation process runs as smooth-ly as possible, making its own resourcesand manpower available to the project.

“CNOOC is using their own personnelin order to install the antenna systems ontheir marine platforms,” he said.

“For this purpose CNOOC has trainedits technical staff on Orbit’s equipmentboth in a technician course that was con-ducted at Orbit’s facilities and in a specialtechnician course that was commissionedby Orbit and conducted in a CNOOC facil-ity by an Orbit specialist.”

“CNOOC also maintains a stock ofspare parts to assure immediate responseto service calls.”

System choiceCNOOC says that the single most impor-tant driver in its decision to introduceVSAT was an increasing demand for highbandwidth data applications, and theneed to have access to multiple voicechannels simultaneously available whileexchanging data traffic.

“The top benefits of VSAT systems are,first of all, their broadband capabilitiesthat allow implementation of high band-width data applications, which are a must

for running our business,” Mr Zhangexplained.

“But beyond the bandwidth benefit, weare experiencing a great cost saving due tothe fixed service rate that the VSAT isbased on. Alternative technologies chargeon a ‘per use basis’, and for high band-width needs it might accumulate veryhigh service charges.”

“The VSAT systems appear to be geo-graphically independent and with highefficiency, and you can always communi-cate with your land stations independentof time and location.”

CNOOC followed a number of differentselection criteria in its evaluation of itsVSAT options, divided into three mainareas - technical capabilities, reliability andmaintainability, and cost of ownership.

With regard to technical capabilities,CNOOC was looking for a system thatcould perform in harsh environmental con-ditions, with a close eye on reliability andmaintainability as it was important that thisperformance level could be sustained overthe length of the antenna’s life on board.

“In the oil and gas industry, effective andreliable communication is essential for day-to-day business activities,” said Mr Zhang.

“The continuous operability of the plat-forms are crucial and every stop in opera-tion results in high losses. This is why itwas important for us to carefully select thesolution and system that we can rely on.”

“Last but not least, the cost of owner-ship of the solution was also carefully con-sidered. Starting from the initial capitalexpense, through the life cycle cost and theservice cost of the solution, we have foundout that the VSAT solutions are cost effec-tive in the long run and generate the bestvalue for the money.”

‘The flat rate service payment hasincreased the use of the communications

link tenfold’ – Wujian Zhang, CNOOC

CNOOC has already completed dozens of VSAT installations on a range of different ship types

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:53

where to next?

p1-17:p1-14.qxd 21/05/2010 09:53

Mr Zhang says that reaction to the newbroadband systems has been very posi-tive, both in terms of business usage andthe additional communications options ithas created for crews onboard the compa-ny’s ships.

“We are using the VSAT systems forvoice applications, video transmission,internet connectivity and data links fromand to the land office,” he said. “Most of theapplications are used for business purposesbut we are using the infrastructure also forimproving crew morale and allowing theminternet connectivity as well as voice.”

“Availability of internet connectivity atsea, for personal use by the crews, isbecoming more and more important forboth the company and the crew. Havingpersonal e-mail connectivity and access tothe world wide web is considered by manyof the workers as a significant work benefitand it helps attracting better and higherlevel professionals to the company.”

“Naturally, the internet access helps toimprove crew morale and indirectly con-tributes to the efficiency and quality oftheir work.”

Mr Adan of Orbit also notes that therange of communications options avail-able over the VSAT system has createdsignificant efficiencies for CNOOC in itsoil and gas operations.

“Many applications are needed andbecome possible with the availability ofthe broadband link like video, data, voice,fax, and internet,” he said.

“For example, in the oil and gas indus-try, the oil companies can pass to shore

valuable drilling information about seis-mic surveys, mapping of the ocean floor,and mapping of underwater obstacles thatinterfere with underwater pipe laying.”

“In addition, the broadband connectioncan be used for passing back analysedinformation and commands from the headoffice on shore and floating vessels.”

One potential downside to the tenfoldboost in traffic CNOOC has seen since theintroduction of VSAT is the heightenedlikelihood of unwanted and maliciousapplications finding their way into thenetwork, an issue the company says it istaking steps to combat.

“The significant increase in the use ofthe communication link and its connectiv-ity to the internet has increased the risk ofgetting hit by viruses, spywares andTrojans,” said Mr Zhang.

“CNOOC is aware of the changes in theenvironment and is taking appropriatemeasures to protect itself and its network.”

“Accordingly, a Firewall application isbeing used in the routers and we continu-ously control the number of ports. In addi-tion, all PC terminals use antivirus soft-ware for protection.”

FutureWith the VSAT systems soon to beinstalled aboard all of the vessels in theCNOOC fleet, Mr Zhang and the companyare looking at new ways of leveraging thetechnology to further improve operationsin the future.

“Our goal is to reach a position whereall the computers both on and off shore are

all operating as part of one network butwe are not there yet,” he said.“Establishing such a network is a chal-lenge that we are facing and we are hop-ing to overcome it using our own propri-etary management software system.”

“Remote Monitoring is one of the mostimportant applications that we can foresee.The ability to remotely monitor the equip-ment on board can centralise the serviceand maintenance process, save costs and inmany cases even increase revenues as wewill be able to continue operation of theequipment even on unmanned platforms.”

“Also video conferencing could be ben-eficial as it will allow remote expert tech-nical support from a central on-land loca-tion (instead of having to transport expertsupport on board).”

With these types of broadband-basedapplications now on the agenda forCNOOC as it looks at the next generationof its IT infrastructure, Mr Zhang says thathe expects that all shipping companieswill have to join the move to broadband,or risk being left behind as their competi-tors take advantage of these improvedoperational efficiencies.

“Broadband communication, anywhereand anytime, is no longer a question of ‘if’but rather a question of ‘when’, and inmany cases the answer for the ‘when’question is – now!” he told us.

“We, at CNOOC, believe that the transi-tion to broadband is already taking placeand sooner or later every moving platformat sea (as well as on shore) will be connect-ed via some form of broadband connection.

And naturally, satellite communication isthe most common and practical solution forbroadband connectivity at sea.”

“We have started installing VSATequipment and we believe that we willeventually connect most of our maritimeplatforms to VSAT, to allow broadbandconnectivity and the use of modern appli-cations that will help us become morecompetitive and successful.”

Mr Adan is also confident that the mar-itime communications market will contin-ue to grow in the future, and that thebandwidth requirements of shipping com-panies will expand at a rapid pace.

“The economic crisis did slow downmarket growth, but did not stop it com-pletely,” he told us. “The number of appli-cations requiring broadband communica-tion increases, and so does the number ofmarine vessels that are enjoying broad-band internet.”

“Similarly, one can expect to see contin-uous efforts to develop products withimproved performance which are alsolighter, smaller and more cost efficient.These products will have enhanced RF andsuperior tracking technologies to achievehigher accuracy and better stability.”

“Orbit estimates that the high price ofInmarsat services will slowly shift manynarrowband Inmarsat users to VSAT,enabling them to enjoy all the benefits of abroadband link for a fixed monthly rate.We believe that in the near future, thecombination of price, speed and band-width will favour faster Ku- and C-bandVSAT services.”


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SOFTWARE NEWS


www.abs-ns.com

Teekay Corporation, which carries morethan 10 per cent of the world’s seaborne oil,has selected ABS Nautical Systems to act asits fleet management software provider.

Teekay will replace its existing soft-ware system with ABS Nautical Systems’NS5 integrated package, includingMaintenance and Repair, Purchasing andInventory and Drydocking modules.

Since the beginning of the project ABS-NS has operated a special team inVancouver, Canada, to provide on-sitesupport for Teekay to manage the imple-mentation.

“We had a very a focused selectionprocess and criterion in place,” said LesleyGreen, manager, TMS Business Systems,Teekay.

“It was important that we chose a com-

pany with extensive maritime industryexperience and the ability to support us –now and into the future.”

“ABS Nautical Systems has providedus with a knowledgeable on-site team tohelp develop and implement the software.We are confident that with the system’sintegration capabilities and the team’sexperience, this project will be a success.”

Karen Hughey, president and COO ofABS Nautical Systems, noted her pleasureat securing this deal with a major player inthe tanker market.

“We are very pleased to be workingwith such a prestigious company likeTeekay and that our software was able tofit all of their needs,” she said.

“We will strive to achieve the bestresults possible and provide Teekay withthe one-on-one support we are able tooffer all of our customers.”

Teekay to install ABS-NS fleetmanagement software

Teekay’s vessels will now be managed using the NS5 software package. Photo: Teekay

www.s-bis.com

Maritime INFOSYS has released its newShip Brokering Intelligence Solutions (S-BIS) ship brokerage support tool, an inte-grated web and mobile solution to sup-port the ship brokering process.

The system is designed to give shipbrokers, owners, managers and charterersaccess to the latest information, able tosearch among more than 160,000 shipsusing over 600 data fields.

Decision support tools and multiplelive data feeds are also included, fromsources such as Veson Nautical, AIS Liveand Worldscale.

Web based system for brokers launched

PortVision unveils web-based systemfor terminal operators

www.portvision.com

PortVision says that it has created theworld’s first web-based service platformthat integrates vessel tracking, manage-ment and analysis into a single operationaldashboard for marine terminal operators.

The TerminalSmart solution gives ter-minal operators access to PortVision’sdatabase of both real-time and historicalvessel movements based on AIS vessel-tracking data, and combines it with man-agement, analysis and reporting tools.

PortVision’s covered AIS serviceregions include most major US ports andregions, and more than 50 internationalports.

Users of the new system can definetheir own customised fleets of charteredvessels, workboats, tugs, and barges, andcan receive and share e-mail and text-mes-sage alerts about movements within thatfleet.

The system also allows users to accesshistorical data and animated playback forany selected vessels and events.

Based on PortVision’s maritime intelli-gence platform, the company says that ter-minal operators can use the system to

streamline vendor and resource manage-ment, handle all traffic scheduling, dis-patch and management, perform integrat-ed demurrage reporting and analysis, andimprove incident response.

“Marine terminal operators are undermore pressure than ever before to improveefficiency, reduce costs, and enhance theirvisibility into every aspect of the increas-ingly complex terminal environment,”said Dean Rosenberg, chief executive offi-cer with PortVision.

“TerminalSmart not only delivers allnecessary information about current andhistorical vessel locations and events, butalso provides all of the tools to leveragethat information for business intelligenceand analysis, critical decision-making, andcomprehensive, integrated operationalreporting.”

“Plus, TerminalSmart is the only mar-itime intelligence platform that gives ter-minal operators access to PortVision’scomprehensive database of vessel infor-mation – we currently process over 40 mil-lion vessel location reports every day andour data warehouse contains 10 billionarrival, departure, passing, and vesselmovement records.”

Ocean Shipmanagement signsantivirus deal

www.port-it.nl

Dutch company Port-IT has agreed a dealwith Ocean Shipmanagement to provideits Antivirus Service for installation on 32vessels in July 2010.

Ocean Shipmanagement quality manag-er, Oliver Kautz, notes that his companywas looking to implement a solution thatwould remove the need to send CDs withupdates to the ships, but without incurringexcessive satellite communications costs.

“We looked for a low-maintenance[antivirus] solution, which will effectivelyprotect our PCs and at the same time willnot keep us busy sending CDs every monthor quarterly like other solutions,” he said.

“Granting a long trial period we couldassure ourselves of the functionality of the[Port-IT] software. But at the end, the com-bination of the good antivirus solution, aproactive service approach and a reason-able price were the decisive factors. Wehave been convinced that Port-IT doesunderstand shipping needs.”

Trials of the system were carried outaboard the CSAV Panamby, beginning inAugust 2009, and after six months of satis-factory operation Ocean Shipmanagementdecided to proceed with a contract cover-ing 26 existing ships and six newbuilds for which Ocean provides full technicalmanagement.

The rollout will be managed by Port-IT,which will provide custom made ‘starterkits’ tailored for Ocean’s operational infra-structure that will allow the crews toinstall the solution onboard.

“Ocean Shipmanagement’s signup forus is a great marker that validates the [per-formance] and efficiency of our service,”commented Youri Hart, Port IT CEO.

“The dedication that Port-IT providesin support and guidance was noticed andhighly appreciated. The additional vesselsto our service can easily be supported andmanaged online and every aspect can becontrolled. We are very happy with thedetermination of Mr Kautz to learn alldetails of our service and to run a thor-ough trial.”

This agreement with OceanShipmanagement has followed closelyafter Port-IT’s recent release of a new‘Port-IT Anti-Malware’ service for the

maritime industry, which was launched atthe Sea Japan exhibition in Tokyo.

The new application aims to improvecomputer security protection against mal-ware, spyware and advanced Trojan threats.

The system has been developed follow-ing a 2009 research study conducted bythe company into virus and malwarethreats onboard sea vessels.

This led to a focus on creating an applica-tion that uses anti-malware techniques todetect and remove malicious programs fromonboard computers, which can be updatedvia satellite systems but using small file sizesto keep airtime costs to a minimum.

The software employed within the anti-malware service is a combination of theMalwarebytes system, developed byMalwarebytes Corporation, and Port-IT’sown technology.

The application is specifically maritime-focused, with a vessel-based licensing sys-tem and online client management portal.

Port-IT says that the anti-malware sys-tem monitors all of the computer’sprocesses and can stop malicious softwarebefore it begins to operate.

This service can work in parallel withPort-IT’s Antivirus solution, with a sepa-rate set of security features.

The maritime antivirus product hasalready been employed in combinationwith the new anti-malware product on allvessel visits by Port-IT engineers during thesix months prior to launch to test the prod-uct for service usage, the company says.

The system’s web-based platformallows for mobile access, and helps to savetime by pre-populating brokering infor-mation into the necessary documents.

As a web-based product S-BIS requiresno special software or hardware installa-tion - subscribed users simply log-in tothe website for access.

“This is about finding the right ship atthe right time with the right price and theright paperwork – all in one easy-to-navi-gate helm,” says Maritime INFOSYSfounder and chief architect, Roy Devlin.

“We take brokering into the 21st centu-ry utilising all that today’s technology hasto offer in one simple solution.”

‘We are happy with the results of thethorough trial of the system’

– Youri Hart, Port-IT

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SDSD has appointed PaulJarvis as a new business con-sultant, where he will beinvolved in the deploymentof the SD Matrix softwaresystem. Mr Jarvis has previ-ously worked at shipbrokinggroup Simpson, Spenceand Young (SSY), and atElectronic ShippingSolutions.

SOFTWARE NEWS


www.sdsd.com

www.thome.com.sg

The Thome Group of Companies, head-quartered in Singapore, has installed theCOMPAS crew management softwaresystem across its fleet of vessels, as well

as in all branch offices, manning offices,and travel agents.

Captain Michael Elwert, director ofThome Group Human Resources andCrewing, said the introduction of thesystem, developed by IT company

Thome implements crewing software across fleetNetvision, was a significant move for-ward in the company’s history.

“Thome and all its branches, sub-sidiaries, partners and manning officesworldwide are now working together inour new web based crew management

system, COMPAS,” he said. “This is yet another important mile-

stone in our strategic drive and ultimategoal – to be among the best performingship managers in the world.”

According to Captain Elwert, theThome Group implementedthe COMPAS crew man-agement system to imp-rove efficiency in its data collection and distribution, and develop better time management.

The system will also helpin allowing Thome to sharedata on crew managementoperations with relevantthird-parties, on a real-timebasis.

The web-based third gen-eration crew managementsystem has a number of fea-tures to assist in operatingcrew pools, and can producecrewing reports and statis-tics such as retention rate,age profiling, OCIMF matrixcompliance, CVs, traininglogs, certification, crewingstrategies and more.

“COMPAS is a state-of-the-art manpower manage-ment system that addressesthe needs of any ship man-agement company regard-less of staff capacity andlocations," said Netvisiongeneral manager and chiefsoftware architect, CornelCiocan.

“It provides necessaryfunctions to manage allaspects of crewing such asadvanced crew planning,crew change management,crew database, training,assessment, logistics andmore.”

"Our crew informationdatabase provides efficientmeans for storing andretrieving a large amount ofcrew-related data besidesjob history, experience, edu-cation, training, vital statis-tics, photos, nearest airport,passport and visa informa-tion and general payrolltransactions.”

LEADER IN MOBILE BROADBAND

Find out how KVH TracPhone V7 can change your business at:

www.kvh.com/digitalship

KVH Europe A/S • Kokkedal Industripark 2B • 2980 Kokkedal • Denmark

Tel: +45 45 160 180 • Fax: +45 45 160 181 • E-mail: [email protected]

©2010 KVH Industries, Inc. KVH, TracPhone, and the unique light-colored dome with dark contrasting baseplate are registered trademarks of KVH Industries, Inc. 10_KE_V7miniVSAT_Comm_DigitalShip“What Broadband at sea was meant to be” and “mini-VSAT Broadband” are service marks of KVH Industries, Inc.

ArcLight is a registered trademark of ViaSat, Inc.; all other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Patents Pending.

An end-to-end communications solution with a compact 60 cm antenna and a fully integrated control unit and modem.

Dramatically cut your airtime costsand improve your ship’s operations with KVH’s mini-VSAT BroadbandSM –the most affordable service for broadband Internet, e-mail, and telephone!

Fast, low-cost Internet at sea – Rely on broadband Internet with speeds as fast as 2 Mbps down and 512 Kbps up while saving 85% or more vs. other solutions.

Crystal-clear telephone calls – Make calls whenever and wherever you wantusing either of the two lines of integrated voice service optimised for maritime customers or KVH’s crew calling solution.

Easy to install and setup –ViaSat’s exclusive ArcLight® spread spectrumtechnology enables a small 60 cm antenna with dramatically superior performance, easy installation and activation in as little as 1 day!

Seamless global coverage – mini-VSAT Broadband is a rapidly expanding Ku-band global network with totally automatic satellite switching and seamless roaming between regions.

What broadband at sea was meant to beSM – TracPhone® V7.

“We were particularly impressed with the TracPhone V7’s small size and afford-able airtime. We are excited to have a new solution for day-to-day shipboard satellite communications that is both affordable and easy to install alongside our existing Inmarsat and GSM systems. This helps to keep our business operations efficient, and allows the crew to use the services to stay in touch with their loved ones. This is espe-cially important, because in our industry retaining quality crew and officers is essen-tial.”

- Runar Gaarder, ICT Manager for Mowinckel Ship Management

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p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:24 Page 3


Digital Ship

www.autoship.com

Autoship Systems Corporation (ASC) ofCanada has launched the latest version ofits Autoship marine design software.

The new version of the surface model-ling program, Autoship, aims to improveusability following a re-write of the sur-face-to-surface intersection function andthe removal of certain requirements withregard to tolerances.

Many of the user-input dialogues havebeen streamlined in order to simplify controlof the program, with the Pro version allow-ing import of IGES (Initial GraphicsExchange Specification) entities 141 and 143.

The stability and strength calculationprogram, Autohydro, has been expandedto include the latest regulations, includingnew probabilistic damage assessmentrules and enhanced handling of free sur-face effects.

A new configurable report tool is alsoin the works for the updated version,which the company says will shorten thetime needed to create customised reports,as is a new Modelmaker (for model cre-ation and editing) built to updated user-interface control specifications.

ASC says that planning has begun on acloser integration of modelling forAutohydro from within Autoship.

Autoship launches latest vesseldesign system

Seagull acquires Green-Jakobsen stake

www.seagull.no

Seagull AS has acquired a 20 per cent stake in Copenhagen-based Green-Jakobsen, a company specialisingin human resource development for shipping.

Seagull has also retained a furtheroption to acquire a larger portion ofshares in Green-Jakobsen, and reached aformal agreement to work jointly ondeveloping training concepts for theshipping and offshore sectors.

The two companies first started col-laborating in 2007, with Seagull going onto offer Green-Jakobsen leadership train-ing modules as part of the Seagull‘Library for Seafarers’.

While the companies say that theywill continue to operate as two separatebusinesses, the new agreement will seeSeagull engaging Green-Jakobsen to runcertain competence management projectsfor Seagull clients, while at the same timeacquiring the rights to all CBT modulesdeveloped by Green-Jakobsen to includein its training library.

“The need to develop the highest lev-els of skills in the most senior officers hasnot changed, but the way of deliveringthe training to achieve those skill levelshas changed profoundly,” said RogerRingstad, Seagull managing director.

“In a relatively short period of time, alarge number of Seagull’s clients haveembraced the CBT-based managementtraining developed by Green-Jakobsenand offered through Seagull’s compre-hensive onboard library.”

“Part of the extended collaboration isto further develop a concept for manage-ment training, an area where Seagull isaiming for market leadership.”

Software upgrade from FarSounderwww.farsounder.com

FarSounder has released SonaSoft 2.1, asoftware upgrade for its FS-3DT ForwardLooking Sonar system.

The update has been developed toinclude system improvements based onuser feedback, and features enhancementssuch as a vessel speed upgrade, offering20 knot capability, and better automaticbottom detection, with improved sea floorvisualisation.

The Graphic User Interface (GUI) has

also been the subject of an overhaul, withnew display windows, processor controlsand profiles locations.

While some of the changes have been dueto ongoing efforts, the company says thatmany of the operational ones are the resultof information received from system users.

SonaSoft 2.1 is available at no chargeas an upgrade for existing customers, andis included in all new deliveries.

A copy of this latest software demomay be downloaded from theFarSounder website.

‘The way of delivering traininghas changed profoundly’

– Roger Ringstad, Seagull

p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:24 Page 4

SOFTWARE NEWS


Mowinckel and Alpha go for e-commerce www.shipserv.com

ShipServ has signed two new agreementsto provide e-commerce services toMowinckel Ship Management and AlphaShipmanagement.

Under the deals Mowinckel and Alphawill both subscribe to ShipServ's onlineship supplies trading platform TradeNet,which will allow the companies to route

orders and requests for quotes through asingle, electronic connection to all of theirsuppliers.

Mowinckel already uses AMOS forpurchasing, with the roll-out of ShipServscheduled for the end of May according tothe project plan, while Alpha has alreadybeen involved in pilot testing of the sys-tem prior to agreeing this contract.

Both companies believe that the intro-duction of this technology will help toimprove efficiency in operations.

“Mowinckel is a progressive shippingbusiness company and after finishingother projects to make our business moreefficient ShipServ is a good choice tostreamline our purchasing process,” saidOve Berntzen, managing director,Mowinckel Ship Management.

Hartmut Koester, purchase manager,Alpha Shipmanagement, also commented:“Alpha Shipmanagement is a modernshipping business and ShipServ is part ofa broader initiative to innovate our busi-ness processes.”

“With ShipServ we will transform howwe manage our purchasing, becomingmore efficient, as well as gaining betterinsight into our operations.”

ShipServ says that nearly 150 ship man-agement companies are now usingTradeNet, connecting to more than 10,000suppliers worldwide.

Ane Fosseng, ShipServ, and Ove Berntzen,Mowinckel Ship Management,celebrate the new agreement

www.intergraph.com

Intergraph has released the new versionof its SmartMarine 3D software for ship-builders, with expanded automationcapabilities.

SmartMarine 3D is the rule-baseddesign and fabrication component ofIntergraph’s SmartMarine Enterprise soft-ware portfolio, used for the modulardesign of structures, piping, equipment,and electrical modelling with automateddetailing drawing capabilities.

The newest version of the softwareintroduces enhanced rule-based designautomation capabilities, with graphicalprogramming capabilities, referred to as'geometric constructions', to enable thedefinition of complex elements and struc-tures based on engineering, constructionand manufacturing rules.

Once defined, the geometric construc-tions can be applied to other similar situa-tions in the model. With Intergraph’s asso-ciativity engine, the geometric constructionwill be fully adapted to the new situationusing other objects as input parameters.

The new features also include expand-ed multi-3D model referencing and model

data reuse capabilities. The system cannow reference external data from differentsources for visualisation, clash detectionand routed systems connections.

Intergraph notes that in shipbuildingbuildups the elements created are oftentreated as single entities during the pre-FEED (front end engineering design) andFEED phase, but are separated into inde-pendent parts at the detail design andmanufacturing stage.

The new software version allows users tobring these new features all the way fromdesign to manufacturing without remodel-ling, to ensure consistency of designs.

SmartMarine 3D can also copy 3D datawithin a model or to another model whilemaintaining relationships within thedesign. Entire modules or units of a vesselcan be replicated with all their associatedintelligence.

“The industry no longer has to rely onold, limited systems with limited and pro-prietary technology. Now, clients can takeadvantage of this technology to bring pro-ductivity into their business and enhanceglobal competitiveness,” said PatrickHolcomb, Intergraph process, power andmarine executive vice president.

New version of ship design software released

New ShipDecision version releasedwww.shipdecision.com

Montreal-based software company Stelviohas released the latest version of itsShipDecision technology, version 3.0.

The new system has been developedusing the Adobe Flex framework, andoperates like a "virtual command centre",according to the company.

Each business partner involved in thevoyage process can be linked into the sys-tem to access the information they require,once they have an internet connection. Datais protected through the use of encryption.

The software processes data, docu-ments and communications related toeach voyage, saving every piece of infor-mation in an electronic vault which can beaccessed by authorised users. This alsoprovides a tamper-proof audit trail of allbusiness activities.

The web-based architecture removes

the need for in-house servers, with datastored on Stelvio-owned server farmshoused at two separate hosting facilities inthe Greater Montreal area.

“We fully understand the enormoustime pressures and information sharingchallenges that confront the maritime sec-tor,” said Albert Carbone, president ofStelvio Inc.

"As software developers, our job is todesign solutions that make it easier forpeople to handle their work. When youlog into your system in the morning, youwant to see your critical informationorganised in a way that makes sense toyou. That’s exactly what you get whenyou use ShipDecision.”

The new software version featuresspecific modules for brokers, operators,charterers, surveyors, agents, insurersand registries, which can be customisedas required.

Online gas supply website launchedwww.martek-marine.com

Martek Marine has launched Fastcalgas, anew calibration gas supply service for shipowners and managers which will be avail-able over the internet.

Vessel operators using the system willlog-in to a secure website to access theMartek Marine database, which includesinformation on the availability of calibra-tion gas from various manufacturers.

All manufacturer part numbers anddescriptions will be translated into a uni-

fied product type, unique to the company. By placing a product in the site’s shop-

ping basket owners will receive a propos-al by e-mail, which they can then translateinto an order if required.

Payments can be made by credit cardthrough the site, with the Fastcalgas systemalso incorporating a customer rebate basedon user spending over a 12 month period.

Martek Marine says that, as well as ves-sel operators, it will also look to marketthe new service to shipyards, includingrepair yards.

Seanique route for Gardlinewww.soft-impact.com

Cyprus-based software companySOFTimpact has signed a contract withGardline Marine Sciences Ltd, wherebyGardline will implement its Seanique 9.0 solution.

The Seanique system is an ERP solutiondeveloped for the maritime industry,based on Microsoft Dynamics Ax.

Under the terms of the agreement,SOFTimpact will implement its crew andpayroll functions to support Gardline’s

operations at its offices in GreatYarmouth, UK.

Previously known as Gardline Surveys,Gardline Marine Sciences Ltd was estab-lished in 2003 and today claims to be theworld’s largest independently owned sur-vey group.

The company specialises in geophysi-cal, hydrographic, environmental, ocean-graphic and geotechnical surveys, andoperates a fleet of dedicated vesselsincluding multi-role, nearshore andcoastal and wind farm support vessels.

www.sener.es

Spanish ship design company SENER reportsthat it is to participate in the OpenHCM(Hull Condition Monitoring) Consortium,an initiative to increase ship safety throughthe transparent electronic processing of con-dition assessment data for the in-serviceoperation of ships and offshore platforms.

The consortium has been formed tocarry on the work started under the EU’sCAS project, which focused on improvingthe efficiency of the thickness measure-ment process onboard ships in service,making it fully electronic.

CAS created a neutral exchange stan-dard to support both this process and theexchange of thickness measurement data.The consortium will retain the latest ver-sion of the exchange standard, calledOpenHCM, manage its evolution, andupdate it where appropriate.

With the first version of the standard asdeveloped by the CAS project having nowbeen in use for two years, the consortiumhas determined that new versions arerequired to improve its operation.

The standard addresses issues relating

to plates, stiffeners, compartments, thick-ness measurements, cracks and coatingconditions, and is mainly intended forshipyards, owners, classification societiesand thickness measurement companies.

The exchanged files are written in XMLand can be visualised as 3D models. Thepartners have already developed commer-cial tools to handle the 3D models and therelated data, including automated meas-urement data input from robotic systems.

In addition to SENER, the consortium'sinitial members include IACS classifica-tion societies Bureau Veritas,Germanischer Lloyd and the RussianMaritime Register of Shipping, Dutchcompany Materiaal Metingen Europe andFrench robotics firm Cybernétix.

The consortium members believe that itis in the interests of the maritime industryfor OpenHCM to be widely used, in orderto provide reliable and efficient seamlesscommunication across all in-service opera-tional processes.

Following further practical implemen-tations, they say that they intend to applyto have the standard made official byIACS and other regulatory bodies.

Sener joins OpenHCM consortium

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SOFTWARE


SS hip brokering, as a profession, hasbeen in vogue since the early daysof commercial shipping.

Initially the owner of the ship was alsothe trader – or in other words, the traderwas the owner of the ship. He boughtgoods in one place, carried the goods in hisship to another place and sold them there.

As trade evolved, the trading activityand the shipping activity were separated;the ship owner merely carried cargo fromthe trader or various traders in one loca-tion to another location and handed it overto the buyers.

With the evolution in trade specialisa-tion in shipping, the role of shipbrokersbecame more pronounced. The shipbrokerwas the intermediary who would findships for the merchants; and cargoes forthe ship owners who often travelled withthe ship.

The modern day shipping market com-prises of, on one side, shipowners withvarying fleet sizes and operators, andthose who do not own ships but neverthe-less control the commercial operations ofships, and on the other side, charterers ofvarying sizes who control different car-goes – large and small lots; the shipbrokeris an intermediary between the ownersand the charterers.

The primary role of the shipbrokerremains as ‘finding ships for cargoes andcargoes for ships’, but modern day com-munication and computing tools areredefining the finer aspects of shipbroking.

This paper looks at the role of the ship-brokers in the past, the impact of technologyon the profession of ship brokering, and thechanging role of shipbrokers. The dry-cargomarket is taken for analysis as it is the leaststandardised shipping market – and per-haps one of the most complicated in terms ofpractices and commercial operations.

Information exchangeShipping is an international business. Aperson dealing with ship-chartering has towork with the conditions prevailing dayby day in the international freight market.

A large number of customs and rules ofthe trade have been established throughthe years all over the world. These rulesand ethics are scrupulously followed bypractitioners worldwide, otherwise itwould not be possible to do businessworth millions of dollars with partiesacross the world at short notice.

Chartering work is essentially a form ofexchange of information. It is a businesswhere the right information at the rightmoment is essential to be successful.

Everyone involved in chartering acts, toa large extent, as a collector, judge and dis-tributor of information. Ship broking canbe seen as an information network; a net-work of people, as well as technology thatfacilitates information exchange.

A great deal of the flow of informationconsists of details on fixtures all over theworld. ‘Making a fixture’ means that theparties interested in a specific sea trans-port contract reach an agreement throughnegotiations.

The parties involved in a chartering dealare, on the one hand, someone who owns,controls or operates a ship (as an owner,time chartered owner or disponent owner).We shall call him Owner for simplicity.

On the other hand, there are personswho require some cargo to be carried bysea transport between two destinations.Normally (but not always) he is the cargoowner. Let us call him Charterer. TheCharterer can also act as an Owner whenhe controls the tonnage.

Shipbrokers normally specialise in aspecific segment of the market; be it drycargo, chemical, passenger vessels, ROROvessels etc. The various market segmentshave their own peculiarities and the mar-ket behaviour is also varied – forcing thepractitioners to adopt specialisations.

Shipbroking, particularly for a com-petitive broker, is an opportunity-basedbusiness.

As and when opportunities for newbusiness crop up, the broker has to be onhis toes to help conclude the deal. Theimportance of time is all the more acutethese days, when certain segments of themarket see highly volatile fluctuations.

The charterers value the broker’s infor-mation, knowledge, and skills for negotia-tion, as well as his perception of the mar-ket. As in other businesses, value addedservices generate goodwill and brokerswho offer such services stand out amongother ordinary ones.

The shipbroker’s role can be broadlyclassified as follows: finding ships for car-goes and cargo for ships; a source of infor-mation; analysing market trends; advisingowners and charterers; and acting as a dis-pute resolver.

Managingcommunications

The primary function of a shipbroker rep-resenting a ship-owner is to find employ-ment for the ships under the control of hisprincipal (the ship-owner or ship operator).

In the case of a shipbroker representinga cargo interest, the shipbroker’s role is to

find suitable ships for the cargo which hisprincipal (the charterer) wants to trans-port. This function requires an in depthknowledge of ships and cargoes, informa-tion about ports, methods of loading anddischarging of various cargoes, weatherpatterns, demand and supply of ships andso forth.

With the advent of digital communica-tion and powerful computing techniquesthe shipbroker’s network has grown farand wide.

Each ship broker gets cargo and shippositions from a hundred sources or so –over a thousand e-mails a day. Each brokercirculates his prospective businesses –ships looking for cargoes or cargoes look-ing for suitable ships – to his contacts. Someof these are re-circulated again and again.

Managing the vast number of e-mailmessages received by a ship broker everyday is a challenge in itself.

Simple solutions like filters, ‘rules’ etccan be used to minimise the inflow of mes-sages, but this may not be an easy taskconsidering the fact that almost everymessage with cargo and ship informationis a source of information for the shipbro-ker. It shows the state of the market interms of demand and supply of ships.Activating filters often sends many of thewanted messages to the ‘junk’ folder.

The shipbroker’s role as a source of infor-mation has also evolved. In olden times theshipbroker had rather limited reach, each

broker had a few contacts with whom hehad interacted regularly using telex as theprimary mode of communication.

With telex being expensive and not souser friendly (relatively speaking), theinteraction was limited to bare essentials.

Telephone, the other communicationmethod available during that time wasprohibitively expensive, and unreliablewhen used for long distance contacts.‘Urgent’ and ‘Lightning’ calls were notconnected for hours and hours.

Modern digital communicationchanged this drastically. Instant commu-nication to any part of the world – be itland, sea or air – is available at the click ofa button.

Information exchange has become reli-able and far more affordable. Largeamounts of data can be transmitted acrossthe globe instantaneously.

This includes details of fixtures con-cluded, market reports and other informa-tion about ports, economic situation, gov-ernment policies, weather and a host ofother factors that affect shipping business.

The shipbroker can practically be con-sidered as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the ownersand the charterers. He tracks the shippingmarket closely. Port position, vessel avail-ability demand for ship, contacts conclud-ed or failed, all of these things are closelymonitored. Shipbrokers also track the com-petitor’s activity for their principals.

As said earlier, shipbrokers track themarket activity closely. It is this informa-tion that is used by many owners andcharterers to formulate their businessstrategies.

Large ship brokering houses have setup elaborate research outfits. Theseresearch units constantly collect data on awide range of parameters and analysethem. Analytical reports are given to theirclients and associates on a regular basis.

The Baltic Exchange and some leadingship brokers publish information on fix-tures (contracts) concluded. They alsopublish indices on various segments of the market.

The broker is also expected to advise onthe possible trends of rates or availabilityof cargoes or ships etc. For example, ifdemand for iron ore increases, the shipsavailable for carriage of grain may drop,and so much so that the grain freight ratesmay shoot up.

Is it better to go in for long term timecharter or prefer spot market for ourrequirement of space for the next 12months? An experienced broker can givesound advice in such matters.

Modern communications in shipbroking

Controlling and accessing information is vital to the success of the modern ship broker, and modern advances in maritime communications have changed the game in the industry,

making the sector more dynamic than ever before, writes Krishna Prasad, Tradex Marine Global

‘With the advent of digital communicationand powerful computing techniques

the shipbroker’s network has grown’ –Krishna Prasad, Tradex Marine Global

p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:24 Page 7

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SOFTWARE


The shipbroker also has an importantrole as a dispute resolver. Disputes areunavoidable in any business deal – partic-ularly when it is carried out across differ-ent cultures and under conditions whichare dynamic and unpredictable.

Although every contract provides a dis-pute resolution mechanism, the parties tothe contract look to the intermediaries toanticipate potential dispute areas and takecorrective action. They also look to the ship-broker to help resolve any disputes thatmay come up in spite of the precautions.

Shipbrokers, having built up a closerapport with the owner and the chartererare in a position to forge formulas to findsolutions to complicated problems.

Commercial prudence brings most peo-ple to realise that legal disputes take muchtime and money, and both parties will like-ly accept a mutually acceptable and fairsolution from an unbiased broker ratherthan go in for costly litigation. Usually theparties to the contract resort to judicial andother dispute resolution mechanisms onlyafter the intermediaries fail.

Chartering processThe process of chartering starts with thepre fixture analysis when the trad-er/charterer gives the basic details of thebusiness to his broker (or in-house ship-ping department), who estimates theachievable freight rate.

The broker, in addition to giving thefreight rate, also advises the trader aboutimportant parameters affecting the partic-ular business.

Using this information, the trader con-cludes the sale deed and asks the shippingdepartment or the broker to fix the ship.

The broker then floats the inquiryamong his contacts who in turn may cir-culate it further. Various ships are pro-posed for the business. These ships areevaluated in terms of operational efficien-cy, available dates and freight levels.

Once a suitable ship is identified for thebusiness, firm negotiations take placebetween the owner and charterer throughtheir broker(s). Usually the negotiationsare carried out on accept / except basis:meaning only the points of disagreementare repeated in each message and theaccepted points are not mentioned at all.

This is a practice carried over from thetelex days, when each character wasexpensive (and difficult to transmit).

Once the basic terms are agreed, thebroker prepares the recapitulation of thenegotiation. This recapitulation often has aclause which refers to the finer details ofthe contract. The Owners and theCharterers negotiate on these finer con-tract details.

The contract of carriage is consideredconcluded only if they reach an agreementon all the details. If any time during thenegotiation of contract (called the CharterParty) the parties fail to arrive at an agree-ment, the business is dropped.

The broker prepares the contract(Charter Party) and gets it signed by theCharterers and owners.

Chartering negotiations are carried outday and night, and almost always undertime pressure. Whichever mode of com-munication is used – be it telex, e-mail,voice or SMS – all agreements are equal.The age old dictum ‘Our Word is OurBond’ applies.

Information by segmentThe freight market is not a uniform one; itconsists of various market segments thatare not dependent on each other.

The demand and supply and the mar-ket behaviour of each of these segmentsare not necessarily inter related.Individual segments behave in their ownway. It is not uncommon to see one seg-ment riding the crest of a market boomwhen another one will be reeling underdepressive pressures.

The information and data required foranalysing the market trends for each seg-ment are as different as the various seg-ments in the industry.

In addition to supply and demand, thestate of the market also depends on theeconomic situation, price of oil, war,strikes, weather and climatic factors, goodor bad harvest, governmental policies, andso on and so forth.

The hands-on broker needs to have hisdata base spread over a wide variety ofparameters to give meaningful informa-tion to his clients.

The dry cargo segment of the shippingmarket will be examined for this study,due to the fact that it is one of the leastorganised and the least standardised of all segments.

There are a wide variety of ships andcargoes and the parameters affecting eachsegment of the market are not the same.

The world's trading requirements in thedry sector are far more complex than inthe liquid cargo segment, and movementsare dictated by the needs and the wants ofthe world economic situation.

The dry bulk shipbroker has not only toknow his own market, but to have a verykeen eye for world developments,whether they be of an economic or politi-cal nature, or just some disaster or failureof a crop in one country or another.

The dry cargo market is mainly con-cerned with the carriage by full shiploadof the world's primary ‘dry’ commodities:coal, grain, iron ore, phosphates, fertilis-ers, sugar, etc.

The dry cargo market consists of a widevariety of segments; bulkers, multi-pur-pose ships, container ships, Roll-on Roll–off (RORO) ships, passenger ships, cruiseliners, cattle carriers, off-shore supply ves-sels, tugs and barges, project carriers, etc.

There are sub-divisions within each

segment. Within bulkers one can findCape size ships, Panamax ships,Supramax, Handymax, and Handys. Themarket behaviour of each of these seg-ments could be different.

The practices followed within each seg-ment have peculiarities of their own.While larger container ships are usuallyemployed for period charter, a lot of bulk-ers are traded in the ‘spot market’. There

are a wide variety of contract formats usedin the dry cargo segment.

Communicationrevolution

About two decades back shipbroking wasmainly conducted in a few shipping cen-tres, namely New York, London, Sydney,Tokyo, Singapore, Rotterdam and Piraeus.London was the leading international cen-tre with a wide variety of maritime servic-es readily available.

Only with physical presence in one ofthe prominent shipping centres could con-tracts of carriage be negotiated. Telex wasthe only reliable mode of communication,but it was expensive and time consuming.

With the onset of digital communica-tion, the scenario change drastically. Voicecommunication over long distancebecame reliable and efficient. Documentscould be transmitted by facsimile.

Long messages with documents, pic-tures and video clippings could be trans-mitted using e-mails. Messages to a num-ber of recipients could be sent easily and atnegligible cost.

Mobile phones and internet accessibili-ty facilitated regular contact, even whilethe person is on the move. Instant messen-ger on the internet added to the flexibilityby offering instant discussions using inter-net protocol. Physical presence in anylocation was no longer vital.

Ship broking, although a professionwhich was slow to adapt to modern tech-nology, began using the multitude of com-munication modes.

Today, chartering negotiations are car-ried out using a wide variety of communi-cation methods; e-mail, mobile phones,instant messaging and facsimile all at thesame time. A single negotiation may useall or any of the available methods.

Modern communication methods havedrastically reduced communication costs.

During the telex days every characterwas costly and therefore the industryadapted a system of abbreviations; SHINCfor Sundays Holidays Included; SHEXEIU for Sundays Holidays Excluded Evenif Used; MOLOO for More or less atOwners’ Option.

The unaffordable cost of communica-tion earlier had limited the number of con-tacts with whom shipbrokers communi-cated. Usual communication was onlywith a few important contacts.

Some brokering practices have carriedover from the days of Telex,

when communication was expensive.Photo: Kierant

p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:24 Page 9

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SOFTWARE


With inexpensive and versatile moderncommunication, the situation reversed.Shipbrokers transmit their positions forship and cargoes to hundreds of contacts;sometimes more than once a week, oreven daily.

The e-mail system is, however, posing achallenge to the ship broking community interms of authenticity of the contact throughwhom negotiations are carried out.

When telex was the primary mode ofcommunication ‘answer back’ was anauthentication of the party contacted. But,in case of e-mails, unless it is a regular con-tact the contacted party’s authenticity isnot clearly established.

The virtues required for a shipbroker inthe era of inexpensive and instant commu-nication are changing; with more andmore verbal communication, a certainlevel of ‘salesmanship’ is required.

The broker is left to talk-out and con-vince the parties on the contentious issuesin a contract. This often involves modify-ing the clauses of a contract many times sothat the anxieties of the parties concernedare addressed.

Apart from knowledge of the industryand practices of the trade, information dis-semination can perhaps be termed as thecrucial aspect of shipbroking.

A shipbroker’s role can be termed as anetwork of relationships between variousentities; the ship-owner, the charterer,other brokers, etc.

In short, shipbroking can be termed as‘an information network’. The broker is inconstant contact with a variety of sourcesto gather information.

At the core of this activity is the bro-ker’s access to available ships and/or car-goes. This primary information helps thebroker to widen his network among own-ers, charterers and other brokers. In effectthis forms a network which exchangesinformation on a reciprocal basis.

Almost all brokers circulate their openpositions – ships and cargoes – to theircontacts frequently. The contact list con-sists of brokers, owners, charterers, opera-tors and other associates.

With the advent of internet based com-munication systems, which are relativelyinexpensive, the contact list of every bro-ker is updated frequently as newer andnewer players enter the domain everyother day.

The shipbroker is a vital source of infor-mation for the ship-owner and the charter-er. Shipbrokers track each and every busi-ness concluded and this information isregularly passed on to their principals.

Market information is also collectedfrom various other sources like the BalticExchange, the research divisions of someprominent broking houses and a host ofother information sources which churnout information that could have an impactin the shipping market.

Shipbrokers normally specialise in aspecific segment of the market. The char-terers can gain from the broker’s informa-tion, knowledge, skills for negotiation aswell as his perception of the market.

Changing rolesChartering is primarily dependent oncommunication. Shipbrokers, who are theintermediaries in chartering, are mainlyinvolved in information exchange.

The importance of efficient communi-cation methods need not be stressed; it isone of the key factors.

Modern communication systems pro-vide efficient and inexpensive communi-cation – instantly to any part of the world.Pages and pages of documents, photo-graphs or even video clippings can beexchanged instantly – even when a ship isin the midst of an ocean.

The main advantages of e-mail can besummarized as follows: it’s relativelyinexpensive; easy to archive for futurerecall, with search/find options to helptrack e-mails efficiently; they containdetails of correspondence, so no need torely on memory or filed papers for thedetails of the correspondence.

E-mails also give you the facility to editthem any number of times before the e-mail is transmitted to the recipient; theyprovide a time-stamped proof of interac-tion; and they can be sent to multiple mail-ing lists.

While, in the past, shipbrokers workedon the basis of authority given to them bytheir principals, the modern communica-tion systems provide the leverage to getdecisions from the principals at all stagesof negotiation.

Be it day or night; whether at sea orwhile in an aircraft – contact can be main-tained. Therefore, instead of working onthe basis of authority, shipbrokers now getorders from their principal.

In the olden days contacts were gener-ally between owners and brokers, or char-terers and brokers. There was not muchcontact between charterers and ownersdirectly.

Ease of modern communication haschanged this – very often we see now char-terers and owners being in direct contact.

No longer do brokers give the excuse oftheir principals being not available, due toweekend holidays or it being after officehours. With mobile phones and theBlackberry almost anyone is accessible ona 24/7 basis.

The chartering methodology is in theprocess of transformation as a result of therevolutionary changes brought in by digi-tal communication and computing power.

Instead of a short list of close contacts,

every broker now has hundreds of con-tacts. Each and every business is flashed tothese contacts many times – sometimesmore than once a day.

During the telex days negotiationswere carried out on the basis of a shortoffer, having only the basic details.Standard contract forms (charter parties)were referred to for all other details.

This method has undergone a majortransformation now. The offer for a char-ter has many clauses; there is a tendencyto include every operational aspect in theoffer.

Negotiating the finer details of the con-tract (charter parties) used to be muchsimpler. The base contract form used to bea standard format and the parties talked

only of very few changes to this basic con-tract.

Instead, these days’ charterers havetheir own charter party formats which areworded very differently from the standardcontract form. This has led to lengthynegotiations on details of the contract –every minute detail of it.

It is also not uncommon nowadays forcharterers to ask for copies of the ship’scertificates. Pages and pages of certificatesare faxed or sent by e-mail.

In the past, charterers and owners fol-lowed the principle of ‘first come firstserved’ meaning that when a ship is openthe ship-owner chose the business fromthe broker who offered the business first.

When more than one broker offers par-

ticular business, the owner almost alwayschose to negotiate through the channelwhich offered the business first.Nowadays, thanks to e-mail and instantmessengers, the same business lands onthe owners’ computers from 10 or 20 bro-kers at the same time. The owner choosesthe most suitable channel – not necessarilythe one who offered the business first.

Even after commencement of the nego-tiation, it is not uncommon for owners (orcharterers) to look at other businesses.They may leave a negotiation half waythrough and choose to work with anotherbusiness.

In the past, once the owner (or charter-er) chose a particular business and startednegotiations they tried to conclude it.Only if the chosen business fails do theygo for another. One could say that thenegotiations are no longer focused.

A changing marketThe charter market is not only dependenton the demand and supply of ships but avariety of other factors.

With modern technology, informationon the parameters which affect the ship-ping market gets transmitted far and widein seconds. Every new piece of businessspreads like wildfire – and the perceptionof the owners and charterers change withevery bit of new business they see.

A multitude of other factors, economic,political, financial, government policies,every small bit of information is analysedin depth and its impact on the marketascertained.

The downside of it all is that unsub-stantiated rumours can vitiate decisionmaking. The ultra sensitive brokers mayread too much into an event and maychange their decisions. Just like the stockmarkets, ‘sentiment’ may affect the rates.

Shipping has generally been an indus-try which was slow in adopting moderntechnology, though it can be seen thatshipbrokers nowadays use all the avail-able means of communication.

However, the practices and methodsfollowed for many years have still notchanged in such a way as to optimise thetime and effort of the practitioners duringa negotiation. Some of the practices havebecome complicated and less versatile.

This eventually leads to a scenariowhere there has so far been hardly anyconcerted effort from the practitioners orthe international bodies representing themin optimising the methods and practices ofship chartering using modern communi-cation methods. DS

Reference: 1) Shipbroking and Chartering Practice –

L Gorton, R Ihre and Sandevarn; 5th edition, LLP

2) Understanding slow internet adoption: ‘ infomediation in shipbroking markets’

– � Pisanias and L Willcocks – Journal of Information Technology (1999) 14

3) Advantages of e-mail communication – J Babcock. http://jonathanbabcock.com

4) Review of Maritime Transport 2006 – U�CTAD Report

About the authorKrishna Prasad is currently a director inTradex Marine Global, a shipbroking com-pany based in Dubai.

Mr Prasad has previously worked withthe Shipping Corporation of India, Puyvast

Chartering, Oasis Ship Management andHuadao Shipping Ltd, Hong Kong, a sub-sidiary of BM Shipping Group of Italy.

He is also a Fellow of the Institute ofChartered Shipbrokers and the CharteredInstitute of Logistics and Transport.

Contracts have become much more complex as cheap and easy communicationallows for multiple revisions

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Making software a good investmentIn an economic downturn technology investments can be hard to justify – but may be

the very best way of improving competitiveness. Dr Torsten Büssow, Germanischer Lloyd, gave Digital Ship some advice about how to make the most of software investments

SOFTWARE


EE verybody in the modern world isusing software to manage and con-trol a wide variety of aspects of

their day to day lives.Even those of us that don’t spend hours

a day in front of a computer will be sur-rounded by systems running basic appli-cations, from the mobile phone in theirpocket to the onboard technology in theircar telling them how far they’ve travelled.

At the business level software tends tobe a lot more sophisticated than a dash-board clock, but the fundamental reason-ing driving the use of these systems is thesame – making life easier and more effi-cient through the use of specialised tools.

Dr Torsten Büssow, head of maritimesoftware at Germanischer Lloyd, believesthat understanding these principlesbehind the use of technology and softwaresystems is a key ingredient in makingthem work for you.

He argues that the principle of effec-tively using tools to manage processes isquite a simple one, and has been under-stood long before we had computers –drawing on the early parts of the twenti-eth century to illustrate the point.

“Think of the Model-T Ford car, one ofthe most successful cars in the last century– for two decades it had a 60 per cent mar-ket share,” he said.

“Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, it wasa German guy. He didn’t invent the assem-bly line either, like many people think, hejust copied the idea from other industriesthat were using this type of production.”

“When somebody asked him what hedid differently, he said ‘we put a higherskill into management, planning and toolbuilding’. To me, the interesting thing isthat tool building is only one part of theequation, and the tools he is referring towould today typically refer to software. Sothis principle is nothing new.”

From Dr Büssow’s point of view,appreciation of this principle has beensomewhat lacking in the maritime indus-try in recent years – however, with a glob-al downturn forcing many to re-examinethe way they do business, there is the pos-sibility to draw more attention to the toolsthey use within their operations.

“From my perspective I think we’renow at a stage where the shipping indus-try is changing its focus from just trying tomanage huge growth, to starting to look atincreasing competitiveness,” he said.

“This means looking at competitors inthe same local markets as you, but alsolooking at completely different markets.And when focus switches from growthto competitiveness, software can play akey role.”

So how can software contribute tomaking a company more competitive? DrBüssow suggests that efficiencies can berealised in a wide range of areas, and

points to some software projects he has been involved in in other industriesto demonstrate.

“An oil upstream company rolled out acomplete ERP system across its Europeanorganisation and reduced its purchasingcosts by 8 per cent, on an €800 million pur-chasing volume – that’s a pretty signifi-cant number,” he said.

“At a logistics service company wemanaged to increase the profitability by 20per cent by just using the software to helpthem understand how profitable each sin-gle client group was. An insurance com-pany introduced a company-wide CRMsystem and were able to increase their rev-enue per client.”

“An oil major reduced its back officefunction costs by 25 per cent, costs foradministrative functions like finance andHR and purchasing, by integrating into amodern ERP environment and restructur-ing the company into what we’d call ashared service environment.”

Dr Büssow points out that the evidencelinking IT spending and growth is there,and notes that growth in the US has accel-erated in line with increased spendingon technology systems over the last twen-ty years.

Software spendWhile there may be a certain logic

behind this argument for software, the lessacceptable part for many companies expe-riencing the squeeze of a shrinking marketis that dirty word ‘spending’.

By Dr Büssow’s calculations, a reluc-

tance to invest in software has been a typ-ical feature of the maritime market formany years, with the overall market wortha small amount of money relative to thesize of the industry.

“If you talk about the shipping technol-ogy market you’re talking about differentsegments, there are systems for naviga-tion, systems for communications, sys-

tems for ship automation,” he said. “Thoseare mostly hardware driven, I think.There’s software that you buy to run them,but a lot of that is to do with the hardwarethat you buy.”

“There are two segments that have apure software focus – one is freight ortransport management, getting a ship-ment from A to B, and the other is shipand fleet management, so that’s the coreshipping applications that you knowabout.”

“The market size for these two seg-ments is about €300 or €400 million, foreach segment. That’s the annual spendglobally of shipping companies investingin software – a very small market, thoughit has been growing by about 10 per centeach year.”

To put those figures into perspective,Dr Büssow looks at the oil and gas indus-try for comparison.

“If you ask engineers that know both ofthese industries they will tell you that aship is in no way less complex an assetthan an oil and gas asset,” he said.

“We calculate that in shipping theCapEx (capital expenditure) spend isabout €100 billion annually. In oil and gas

this is about €340 billion – bigger obvious-ly, but useful for comparison.”

“The oil and gas industry is currentlyspending about 3.5 per cent of this CapExon software and related services, half ofwhich is on software licences and half ofwhich is on IT services. The shippingindustry is currently spending only €700million on this, so it’s 0.7 per cent of thetotal annual CapEx investments. This is abig difference, in percentage terms its only20 per cent of the relative spend for the oiland gas industry.”

Dr Büssow says that even this compar-ison does not show the full extent of thedifferences in approach between the twoindustries when it comes to technologyinvestment.

“The total software spend will be aboutmore than just the licences. Look at our€300 million spend in the fleet managementsoftware sector – let’s say the new licencesare about €100 million. Maintenance andsupport, which can be licence related likeupdating the software, those things areabout €130 million,” he said.

“Training, implementation and con-sulting, the ‘services’ share of the spend-ing, is only about 25 per cent of the total,maybe around €70 million together. Inother industries this services share wouldbe about 50 per cent of the total, everytime they spend €1 on software theyshould be able to spend another €1 onservices to go with that.”

“The shipping industry currently does-n’t do this, and the results are that imple-mentation projects do not run on time,people have trouble getting the softwareon the vessel, they have insufficientlytrained crew, and so on.”

Software deploymentSoftware deployment projects within themaritime industry are often plagued withproblems, according to Dr Büssow, withcompanies often expecting miracles fromtheir new systems which have very littlechance of being delivered.

“Clients’ full expectations are rarelymet, especially in terms of things like sav-ing time and having better informationflow and so on. Software is not usuallyas successful as they expected it to be,” he said.

“People give us feedback saying theyhave many island solutions that only solvepartial problems, or that the softwareproviders are IT people that don’t under-stand how their business works, or thesystems are too complex and most func-tionality could be done with Excel.”

“A lot of them will say that they under-estimated the time and effort needed forimplementation, and complain that theexpenses for implementation are muchhigher than for the licences.”

One issue that can affect this imple-

The Ford company knew the value of tool building in managing its assembly lines, more than 100 years ago

p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:24 Page 13

mentation process is the company’sdeployment strategy, with Dr Büssow pin-pointing three alternatives that differentcompanies tend to choose between.

“One type of company could use ‘bestof breed’ solutions, so for each singleprocess it chooses one of the market lead-ing applications,” he said.

“Then there is the mixed approach,where you might have standard softwarefor things like technical management and for finance, and then for things likechartering and crewing they will do itthemselves.”

“Then you will have people who willdo in-house development for their appli-cations. They might have legacy systemsthat are old that they are still using, andthere are still some big players in the mar-ket that invest in developing completelynew systems even though there are stan-dard systems in the market.”

Dr Büssow believes that the third ofthese strategies, in-house development,should really be avoided as far as possible,with the likelihood of success very slim.

“Let’s take a planned maintenance orpurchasing module, typically at themoment you might pay €6,000 per vessel,and also pay some customisation and con-figuration costs,” he said.

“A software development project, ifrun properly, for those systems wouldcost €2 million. There’s no way that a ship-ping company, even with 100 or 150 ves-sels, can manage to get this down to acompetitive rate, even though they mightthink they can.”

“Data capture and the roll-out willcome on top of this, it doesn’t matter if youcreate your own software or buy yoursoftware.”

Crowded marketSo, if in-house development is to be avoid-ed, it would seem that the best approach isto go to an existing provider – however,Dr Büssow notes that this can also be aperilous process.

“At the moment, in this €300 millionsoftware market, we are talking about 100different software providers globally fromour count. Maybe it’s 150, but these arejust the ones we come across,” he said.

“At the core of this market are about 35

ship management software providers,coming from a planned maintenance andtechnical management and procurementangle. They are joined by different special-ist providers for voyage management, forchartering, quality and safety systems,voyage management, and so on.”

“One part of the problem is that, with-in this landscape, this market is not really viable. What is the value to themarket of the planned maintenance mod-ule number 30 or number 31 entering themarket? They’re not better than the oth-ers. We have clients who come to us andsay that they chose this system last yearor two years ago, and now the companyis struggling.”

Another issue that Dr Büssow high-lights is the potential lack of R&D fundingavailable in a highly competitive market.

“If you have 100 different companies ina market of €300 million, each vendormakes a revenue of €3 million. How can acompany invest in new products andinnovative products out of this €3 mil-lion?” he said.

“If you assume that there’s a 10 per centmargin, which is probably not the case atthe moment, they make €300,000 per year– developing a state-of-the-art maritimesoftware product is a €2 million to €3 mil-lion investment.”

“Also, how much does a small vendorhave to depend on one big client to keepthem alive? For another shipping compa-ny, if I’m not the one big company but theother small one I know what will happenif there are resource constraints, which isoften the case at the moment.”

Dr Büssow argues that, in an environ-ment such as this, there are two likely out-comes – the shipping company will paytoo much, or get too little.

“I think it’s probably the second one,because prices are pretty competitive andlow at the moment,” he said.

With this in mind Dr Büssow says thereare three key factors that he would sug-gest a company looks at when evaluatinga potential provider.

“One is investment security – ask if thiscompany going to be around five or tenyears down the road, which would be thetypical length of time you could be usingthe software,” he said.

“The second is innovation – are therefunds available for this and do they have atrack record of being able to invest inproduct innovation? What is their innova-tion cycle like and what kind of new prod-ucts have they created in the past? It’s notenough to just change the colour and thebuttons in the PMS system each year.”

“Third is independence. It’s funny thatout of the software providers a lot of thembelong to other shipping companies, someare obvious but some are not as obvious. Ifyou buy software from this company areyou making your competitors strongerwith your money?”

Road mapDr Büssow says that, in his experience,most companies that he has seen success-fully deploy and enhance their IT systemshave followed a somewhat similar succes-sion of steps, beginning with the mostbasic operational functions.

“When a company looks into usingsoftware to support operations theyalways, from my experience, start withtechnical management and procurement.Those systems are well connected frommost providers, and there are a lot tochoose from,” he said.

“The second step, if they have a wellimplemented PMS, is to look into otheradministrative processes – compliancesupport, getting ISM regulations right,crewing support, and so on. There arefewer solutions in the market for this, andsome will be in-house developed, thoughthis is changing.”

“The next step is to look at innovativemaintenance systems, combining anyplanned regime that is currently the com-mon standard, with condition based sys-tems or systems concerned with the struc-ture of the vessel. Things like hull integri-ty management and condition basedmachinery maintenance.”

“Then the next step, where there arefew players working on this, is to get a realintegrated ERP suite that combines all ofthese things. This will combine all of yourinformation with your financial informa-tion too.”

Dr Büssow is hopeful that, despite thedownturn, more maritime companies maybegin to embark on such a journey, andinvest in improving their competitiveness.

“We talked to a number of clients in thelast year about IT budget development,and there were some good signs. About 50per cent of those we asked said the ITbudget had increased, 40 per cent saidthey’d stayed the same, and only 10 percent said it was decreasing,” he said.

“You can check for yourself the value ofa good software system. A good shipman-agement software system could cost youabout €10,000 per year, per vessel. This isonly a small fraction of any other costs youwould have in your operating budget.”

“Compare the difference in missing orover-ordering spare parts, in the effort youneed to prove quality of maintenance toyour charterers, in the workload for yourkey staff. The benefits available from asoftware investment are usually not thatdifficult to derive.”


Developing a state-of-the-art maritime software product isa €2 million to €3 million investment

Digital Ship

DS

p18-31:p15-25.qxd 21/05/2010 10:26 Page 14

Maritime Internet connection costs are very high and have their own technical challenges to keep your ship connected. Yet they are equally threatened by viruses, spam, intrusion attacks, spyware, malware, bandwidth abuse and disrup-tions. The impact of each of these threats at sea is however much bigger with much further reaching consequences.

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p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:41 Page 1


K-Chief system works as the cargo controlroom while the CHS represents the vesselsystem outside of the control room, fullycontrolled from an instructor station.

The new simulator features the samenumber and volumes of cargo/ballasttanks, whilst the pumps and pipelineshave the same characteristics as theOttoman Equity. Functionalities like inertgas and cargo heating are also included.

The integrated system provides thesame response to Gungen's officers andcrew as they would experience from thereal system onboard. It has a modulardesign, so can be configured as requiredfrom 16 to 20,000 channels, covering the

whole range from low complexity alarmsystems to highly integrated alarm andmonitoring systems, with process controland power management.

"By connecting the K-Chief to our CHS,reflecting the real ship's systems, Gungenhas the capability to train its officers andcrew on how to operate the automationsystem and learn cargo operations beforethey board the ship," said Steffen Jensen,product advisor, Kongsberg Maritime.

"In addition Gungen will benefit fromthe possibility of running more intensiveand extended training on the simulatorthan the trade patterns of the vessel will allow."

www.kongsberg.com

The launch of a Norwegian space-basedAIS satellite, AISSat-1, has been delayedfollowing the Indian Space ResearchOrganisation's (ISRO) decision to post-pone the mission after it detected a "mar-ginal drop in the pressure in the secondstage of the vehicle" while carrying outmandatory checks ahead of the scheduledMay 9th launch.

The launch is now expected to takeplace some time in June.

The new satellite, when launched, aimsto offer maritime authorities an additionalmeans of ensuring safety at sea in theHigh North by detecting AIS signals fromspace. The satellite was one of a number ofpayloads set to be transported aboard theIndian space agency's Polar SatelliteLaunch Vehicle (PSLV-C15).

The AIS satellite is equipped with tech-nology developed as part of a joint effortby the Norwegian Defence ResearchEstablishment (FFI), Kongsberg Seatex AS,the Norwegian Coastal Administrationand the Norwegian Space Centre. Theproject is funded by the NorwegianMinistry of Trade and Industry.

There are already 35 existing AIS basestations deployed along the Norwegiancoast. This system is seen as being comple-mentary to that established infrastructure.

AISSat-1 is a demonstrator and experi-mental satellite carrying equipment forreception and relaying of AIS signals,expanding the AIS coverage area from thecoastal waters covered by those base sta-tions to all maritime zones controlled byNorwegian Authorities.

The technology will be employed in theidentification and coordination of vesselsin search and rescue missions, as well asbeing used for monitoring of vessels car-rying hazardous cargo and other environ-mental risk assessment situations.

"This satellite is an example of how along-term investment in Norwegian expert-ise leads to innovative and high-technologysolutions designed for Norwegian purpos-es," said Norwegian Minister of Trade andIndustry, Trond Giske.

In other news, Kongsberg Maritime,developer of the satellite system, has alsocompleted a Site Acceptance Test (SAT)for the delivery of a Suezmax CargoHandling Simulator (CHS) interfaced tothe Kongsberg K-Chief-500 marineautomation system, to the Turkish shipowner Gungen Maritme & Trading A/S.

The K-Chief 500 is identical to theautomation system installed aboardGungen's newest Suezmax tanker, OttomanEquity; a 150 dwt Hyundai Suezmax.

The interface between the two systemscreates a training environment where the

Norway’s AIS satellite is expected to be launched some time in June 2010

ELECTRONICS & NAVIGATION NEWS Digital Ship

Raytheon Anschütz GmbHD - 24100 Kiel, GermanyTel +49(0)4 31-30 19-0Fax +49(0)4 31-30 19-291

Anschütz

www.raytheon-anschuetz.com

Wherever you navigate. We are with you.

IBS from Raytheon Anschütz offer economic and reliable navigation at sea. Our customers benefi t from personal support throughout the whole program, full life-cycle service included.

Integrated Bridge Systems (IBS)

Multifunctional workstations combine functions of IMO radars, ECDIS and central navigation data display on one dedicated position.

A standardised man-machine interface leads to safe and easy operation.

Norway to launch space-based AIS

p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:41 Page 2

p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:41 Page 3


Wärtsilä and ABB develop diesel emissions technology

www.wartsila.com

www.abb.com

Wärtsilä and ABB Turbo Systems are co-operating in a joint development pro-gramme examining the application ofadvanced engine technology to two-stageturbocharging on large diesel engines.

The technology has been developedthrough co-operation between Wärtsiläand ABB. Wärtsilä has focused on develop-ing engine technology, while ABB is deliv-ering the turbocharging elements manag-ing airflow, pressure ratios and efficiency.

In the new engine design, two tur-bochargers are arranged in series to gener-ate increased air pressure, airflow and asuperior turbocharging effect.

The companies say that this results inan efficiency rating of up to 76 per cent.

The increased air pressure, combinedwith the advanced engine technology,improves the engine output and power

density by up to 10 per cent. At the sametime, both fuel consumption and CO2emissions are reduced.

Further emissions reduction can beachieved with additional engine systems orby the use of exhaust gas after-treatment.

Using the new technology, a prescribedcombination of fuel consumption levelsand reductions in CO2 and NOx emissionscan be selected through detailed systemsconfiguration. Intelligent engine controlallows optimum operation of the newengine design over the whole load range,allowing NOx emissions to be reduced.

The two companies have carried outextensive joint testing of the 2-stage tur-bocharging system on the engine atWärtsilä's test facility in Vaasa, Finland, andsay that the targets for the developmentprogramme have been successfully met.

Wärtsilä and ABB Turbo Systems areplanning to initiate a pilot project of thesystem with a customer in the near future.

formed by the onboard crew themselvesafter consulting BMA engineers, reducingservice costs.

Bjørge Marine Automation has alsolaunched a new SMARTAcademy, an in-house training facility equipped with anoperational SMARTChief range of sys-tems, to help users to increase their com-petence in maintaining the systems.

A vessel’s technical crew attends a twoday training course at BMA’s main facto-ry, where they are introduced to the sys-tem’s key principles and steps to managesystem maintenance.

www.bjorge.no

Bjørge Marine Automation (BMA) ofNorway has launched a service modulefor its SMARTChief II Alarm and ControlSystem that creates a direct link to shore-based service engineers via the internet.

Service engineers or the operator of thevessel can remotely interface with thealarm system to check on its status, pro-viding support to the vessel’s engineersremotely while also being able to assessthe vessel’s overall condition.

To enable the remote connectivity aSMARTLink computer is added and inte-grated with the SMARTChief II systemusing a redundant network connection,but with an extra network connection tothe ship’s network.

This means that the engineer on shoreis able to connect to the onboard controlsystem, typically with a remote desktopconnection from the office, enabling accessto the same screens and information asthose onboard the ship.

BMA’s own service centre can connectdirectly to the vessel and perform real-time service and status checks of the sys-tem remotely, and can assist by offeringadvice in terms of the most appropriateresponse for the alarm in question.

Changes and upgrades to the systemcan be managed remotely as required, andhardware tests and changes can be per-

Internet connected alarms system launched

Digital Ship

Kelvin Hughes reports that it hasexpanded in Singapore and moved intolarger premises. The new office, with astaff of 30, holds stock of Kelvin Hughesnavigational and bridge equipment, aswell as paper and electronic charts andnautical publications. It also offers train-ing and customer support.

Kongsberg Maritime Tech hasopened a new office in St. Petersburg,Russia. This new KongsbergMaritime company has been estab-lished to offer the group's simulation andtraining technologies, as well as workingon developing new systems, and willemploy 15 staff.

McMurdo’s new SMARTFIND S5AIS SART has received UK TypeApproval, authorising it for installation on UK flagged vessels in accordance withMCA (Maritime and CoastguardAgency) regulations. The S5 AIS SARTis designed to assist in life raft locationduring search and rescue operations.

The Kannad Marine SAFELINK EPIRBfrom McMurdo has also achieved

Wheelmark certification, in accordancewith EU MED (Marine EquipmentDirective) 96/98/EC, meaning that theproduct meets IMO SOLAS require-ments for all classes of commercial vessels.

ECDIS Ltd has opened a neweNavigation Centre at Solent BusinessPark in the UK, to deliver its MCAaccredited IMO 1.27 Model ECDIScourse. The company hopes to add to themore than 1,000 people it has trained inthe use of ECDIS with the new facility.

ECDIS manufacturer Adveto isexpanding its presence in Turkey, follow-ing a new partnership deal with Anel E-sistem in Istanbul. Anel will providesales and service coverage for Advetoproducts in the country under the terms ofthe agreement.

www.kelvinhughes.comwww.kongsberg.comwww.mcmurdo.co.ukwww.ecdis.org.ukwww.adveto.comwww.esistem.com.tr

The two companies are developing technology to work with two-stage turbochargers

The BMA system allows onshoretechnicians to directly access

equipment onboard

p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:41 Page 4

www.transas.com

Transas has agreed a deal with Greek shipoperator Cardiff Marine, whereby Transashas begun equipping vessels within thecompany's fleet of more than 90 vesselswith its dual ECDIS system.

The Cardiff Marine fleet features arange of different ship types, includingbulk carriers, product tankers, VLCCs anddrilling vessels.

Along with ECDIS, the contractincludes the supply of the TransasAdmiralty Data Service (TADS), whichwill provide Electronic Navigation Charts(ENCs), Admiralty Digital Publications(ADP) and the Transas TX-97 world chartfolio as a basic set-up for each installedunit.

All dual ECDIS-installed vessels willshift to paperless navigation immediatelyafter the systems have been commis-sioned.

Navigators from the vessels will betrained, under Transas supervision, atdesignated training centres equipped withTransas simulators, including the CosmosTraining Centre and EIM Training Centrein Piraeus.

In addition, Transas Hellas, the compa-ny’s Greek arm, will install a mediumscale simulation complex in its premisesconsisting of NTPRO 5000 and ECDIS4000 MFD simulators.

The first systems have already beeninstalled at a Shanghai shipyard.

In other news, Transas has alsolaunched a new DNV-certified solutionfor direct connection and communicationbetween shore and Transas ECDIS andradar on ships, via the Transas Firewalland Antivirus Protection system (TFAP).

TFAP is used for safe transfer of data

such as ENCs, chart updates, and weatherforecasts.

Transas ECDIS systems already featureonline ordering of ENCs and updatesdirectly, if the ECDIS is used with thecompany’s Chart Assistant software, butthe new type-approval certifies the securi-ty of this direct connection and communi-cation.

Transas dual ECDIS with online con-nection via TFAP has already beeninstalled on two vessels operated by theFive Star Shipping Company.

Both vessels have navigated paperlesssince launch, and receive ENCs and chartupdates via their broadband connectiondirectly onboard into the ECDIS.


www.pcmaritime.co.uk

www.ukho.gov.uk

PC Maritime has announced that itsNavmaster ECDIS is now fully compatiblewith the UK Hydrographic Office's(UKHO) e-Navigator platform.

The e-Navigator service aims to act asan integration system combining differentnavigation data sources, to be displayed ata single point to the navigator onboard.

Further to this, PC Maritime’s market-ing director, Anne Edmonds, says that hercompany wishes to work within thisframework to ensure that customers canmake best use of the enhanced servicesthat can be offered.

“We’ve completed the integration ofNavmaster ECDIS with e-Navigator earlyon so that our customers will be able tobenefit from the UKHO’s product as soonas it is released to them," she said.

"Currently e-Navigator is being trialledonboard a number of vessels before theUKHO releases it into the market. Once itis distributed to end-users, Navmasterusers will be able to export their existingroutes into e-Navigator and make full useof its passage-planning and chart orderingfeatures."

"Equally, future customers will be ableto create their routes in e-Navigator andthen export them into the NavmasterECDIS."

ELECTRONICS & NAVIGATION NEWS

PC Maritime ECDIS compatible with e-Navigator

www.imtech.eu

Imtech, parent company of RadioHolland, has developed a new ElectronicChart Display and Information System(ECDIS), which will be marketed underthe name ECDIS 4500.

The new system will feature a menustructure designed to support manualupdate of data products, support for posi-tion fixing and dead reckoning, route plan-ning, monitoring by intelligent anti-grounding settings, transfer of plannedroute to an integrated adaptive autopilot,and additional information on chart objects

like buoys, cables, and warning areas.The PC systems built into the ECDIS,

including the network, graphic and otherImtech specific interface cards, have beenenvironmentally tested to make sure thatthey continue to work under harsh marineconditions.

Full integration with Imtech’s otherdigital bridge systems can also beachieved with the system, providing radaroverlay and direct autopilot control whenfully connected.

The ECDIS 4500 has additionally beencertified for warship use, as the(W)ECDIS 4500.

Imtech introduces new ECDIS

The ECDIS can be fully integrated with other Imtech digital bridge systems

Users of the Navmaster ECDIS will be able to integrate with e-Navigator when it is released

Cardiff begins switch to paperless

Cardiff has begun to install dual ECDISsystems aboard its fleet of ships

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Digital Ship

www.mcmurdo.co.uk

McMurdo has introduced itslatest Search and RescueTransponder (SART), theRescuer 2, which will formpart of its Kannad Marinerange.

The Rescuer 2 is a 9GHzX-band Radar transponder,designed to assist in ship andsurvival craft location duringsearch and rescue opera-tions, in accordance withIMO, GMDSS and SOLASrequirements.

The system is manufac-tured to operate in themarine environment, and itsshape and twist action acti-vation have been designed tomake the unit easy to store,grasp and operate withgloved or cold, wet hands.

Once activated the SARTautomatically transmits anemergency response signalwhen a radar signal isreceived from a ship or air-craft.

The emergency signal isthen displayed on nearbyships’ radar, enabling itsposition to be pinpointed.The signal identifies the sur-vival craft on the radarscreen by means of a streamof 12 in-line dots.

When in use the unit willremain in standby mode forover 96 hours.

Buoyant and waterproofto 10 metres, the Rescuer 2weighs 360g and has a 5 yearreplaceable battery. It fea-tures audio and visual indi-cation of operation and has abuilt-in test facility.

www.tidelandsignal.ltd.uk

LED-based warning lights from TidelandSignal have been installed on London's KewRailway Bridge for the benefit of vessels pass-ing up and down the River Thames.

The bridge is marked by two pairs of

MLED-140 MaxiHALO-60 lanterns, togetherwith a blanking plate to provide a dark back-ground for the light during the day.

All the lanterns show a fixed flash yellowlight and have a nominal range of 5nm. Thelantern can be de-rated if required, todecrease the intensity of the beam and the

power consumption.Each pair of lanterns was supplied with

one power supply and a battery box housinga 12V VRLA battery to provide a harmonisedpower supply plus standby power in theevent of AC power outage.

Opened in 1869, Kew Railway Bridge is a list-ed structure which crosses the Thames betweenKew and Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick.

New SARTfrom

McMurdo

The signal from the unit willbe displayed on nearbyvessels’ radar screens

Kew Bridge gets vessel lanterns

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ELECTRONICS & NAVIGATION


Seafarer safety and the role oftechnology – Round Table

TT he Digital Ship round table on sea-farer safety and the role of technol-ogy, hosted by Inmarsat at its

headquarters in London, brought togethera panel of nine experts with decades ofexperience in areas such as communica-tions, system design, search and rescue,training, and navigation.

The goal of the discussion was to exam-ine some of the current and emergingtechnologies influencing the maritimemarket, and to offer opinions on howthese systems might contribute toimprovements in the safety and wellbeingof future generations of mariners.

Digital Ship posed a number of specificquestions to the panel (identified in thetable below), starting with a look at thepossible consequences of introducingglobal vessel tracking systems.

Q – Space-based AIS and mandatoryLRIT requirements should make it possi-ble to have a constantly updated pictureof global ship traffic. What are the likelyimplications of this, with regard to thepositive and negative aspects ofincreased visibility for Search andRescue responders, and increased visibil-ity for potential pirates and terrorists?

KH – One of the primary things whensearch and rescue (SAR) takes off is actu-ally knowing where the vessel is. You mayhave some slight bit of information aboutthe problem, but the major thing you wantto know is where the vessel is. In my expe-rience [working on rescue attempts withmaritime enforcement in Australia], get-ting that information is the first crucialstep. So that is definitely a positive aspect.

The negative aspect is the securityaspect – if every knows where you are youcan get help, but you can also be open toother dangers, so it can be a double-edgedsword. But that can be managed.

BR – From the SAR perspective I’d total-

ly agree with that, SAR responders wouldlike have open link, unsecured communica-tions so they could get as much informationas possible. But from a security perspectiveyou really need to be looking at closed loopsystems, things like AIS are great but it canbe a problem if anyone can go online andsee it, even terrorists.

So from a SAR perspective you want itas open as possible, but for security youneed closed loop – there’s a bit of a dilem-ma there. I’m not sure that you can bal-ance them out because they are conflictingrequirements. If, through the space-basedAIS (S-AIS) we could develop a closedloop system so the information is onlyavailable to certain organisations then thatmight be the answer.

DM – What we’re seeing is a very largeunregulated movement into the world of

personal tracking satellite devices. Youcan protect regulated data on one hand,but there are now about six providers thatbuild Iridium-based personal trackingdevices, and these are going to flow intothe market more and more.

From the point of view of commerciallyavailable equipment it’s going to be verydifficult to keep that information private, Ithink ultimately it can be protected but itwill need to be a coordinated effort.

JH – LRIT has been going through IMOfor the last five or six years, and is finallyup and running. There’s talk aboutwhether or not we should be doing it, butI think, in the 21st century, with the valueof the ships and the cargo, it’s entirely rea-sonable for the Flag States to expect toknow where all the assets are carryingtheir flag.

There are still questions about who isgoing to fund future Data Centres and allthese things, but I can see already since it’sstarted that it can be very valuable usedfor SAR and other purposes.

AIS has been out there for maybe eightyears, and it’s a valuable tool. You have alot of web-based systems where you cansee real-time pictures of ships, and it’s use-ful in getting provisions to ships, gettingengineers there, and so on.

There is a negative side that it could beused by terrorists to attack the ships, butany terrorist who really knows what he’sdoing is not going to be looking online,he’ll have his own AIS receiver which he

can get for $1,000. He’ll plug it into hiscomputer and sit in a remote positionviewing the area he’s interested in. Youcan’t get into LRIT, it’s closed, so the obvi-ous weak link is AIS.

S-AIS is probably the way forward, butI understand that at the moment it’s stillpretty limited. When that gets down tosomething like one [global collection ofAIS transmissions] every four hours it’llbe getting better than the LRIT system.

BL – LRIT is starting to mature nicely,80 per cent of the world’s fleet isequipped, the system seems to work well,and the Flag States are getting the infor-mation they want for some very usefulapplications, especially in SAR.

I have some doubts about S-AIS, myconcern is the security of data since thereare commercial companies dealing with it.They’re going to want to make money outof it.

There will also be issues with clashes ofspectrum use, as the AIS 1 and 2 channelsare not dedicated to maritime use, andhave been sold off in many cases for taxisand trains. That could cause problems inpicking up ‘rubbish’.

If we look at using other channels, thatwill add costs for new equipment, whichwon’t be readily accepted. So we have tobe wary of the cost and benefit issues –what’s the benefit to the mariner, andwhat’s the benefit to the Flag States?

HP – As well as safety there are bene-fits in environmental monitoring, seeing

Digital Ship recently organised a round table discussion session in London, bringing together expertsin a range of different areas to discuss the impact that technology can have in improving seafarer safety.

In the first part of this two-part feature, we look at the topics of space-based AIS and LRIT;Piracy; e-Navigation; Technology vs Political Will; and the GMDSS

The panel consisted of (abbreviations in brackets):(KH) - Kyle Hurst, maritime marketing team, Inmarsat(DM) - Dan Mercer, VP and general manager EMEA, Iridium Satellite (BR) - Peter Bradley, staff officer communications and information, RNLI(JH) - John Hardcastle, director, Joining Shackle(BL) - Peter Blackhurst, head maritime safety services, Inmarsat(HP) - Hugh Phillips, head of products, UKHO(DP) - David Patraiko, director of projects, Nautical Institute(NB) - Dr Nick Bailey, asst. director, Seafarers International Research Centre (JE) - Dr Jonathan Earthy, human factors specialist, Lloyd’s Register

Who’s who: The Panel

‘Things like AIS are great, but it can be a problem if anyone can go online and see it’ – Peter Bradley, RNLI (left); with (l-r) Dan Mercer, Iridium; Kyle Hurst, Inmarsat; and Rob O’Dwyer, Digital Ship

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where vessels are going, looking at oilspills. You could also see things liketracking for cargo, and a whole range ofother uses.

I can say it’s not perfect yet, havingwatched a vessel sail across the Saharadesert on a screen! Unless those kinds ofissues are resolved then safety and SARcould have to deal with confusion as wellas benefitting from it, if it’snot accurate.

DP – Certainly in the shortterm mariners will be con-cerned with their positionbeing known to the generalpublic, through AIS or othernetworks. Piracy is a realissue, terrorism is a concern –however, while turning offyour AIS may be a short termfix it’s not the answer to theissue of piracy. That will haveto be done through meansother than AIS.

In the long term I think weneed to accept that the age ofanonymity for the vessels isgone. Political pressures,commercial pressures – keyinformation will be out there,even with personal devices asalready mentioned.

One of the things we’reworking on is to engage anew relationship betweenthe ship and the shore, other-wise tracking and monitor-ing becomes very ‘BigBrother’, and totally one way– ‘You’re being trackedbecause we want your statis-tics to use against you if itsuits us’.

There are a lot of positivethings that can be developedwith the ship-shore commu-nications if data is har-monised and sharedbetween various shore users,a lot of reporting can bereduced and that can be verybeneficial. There are alsoservices that can be offeredfrom the shore, to advise onbunching traffic, economy ofvoyages, things like that.This technology for trackingneeds to be a two-way street.

NB – One thing thatstruck me about the benefitto SAR was the Air Franceplane that went down in theSouth Atlantic [in 2009], hadthey had access to the sort ofinformation we’re talkingabout the response couldhave been much quicker.

At SIRC we did a studylooking at the implementa-tion of VHF-based AIS, andfound that there were a lot oftechnical problems and inputproblems. If the satellite sys-tem is more complicated itstrikes me that there may bemore potential for issues.

We found ships that wereappearing to be two milesparallel to the actual location– maybe for long range track-


Digital Shiping that may not be too much of an issue,but for situational awareness it will be.

JE – If the whole picture could be partof a single data resource there would bepotential for routing of trade and manage-ment of shipping in the long term, portscould have a lot more information aboutwhat’s going on. It could be used in manyways that we don’t yet know about.

We’re seeing these days that charterersare allowed to communicate with ships,which is not a positive thing, it can lead toadditional stress and pressure. The visibil-ity of traffic to a broader community needsto be examined, but whether it can bemanaged is another matter.

More generally, if the availability of thisdata creates a complete picture there is a

potential of increasing public awareness ofthe scale of sea transport – you could say‘this is world shipping trade’. We’ve neverreally had that before and it would make itpublic, an image of what shipping tradelooks like for the rest of the world.

That might change people’s perspec-tives a bit, as to the scale of what we do asan industry.

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Q – Looking at piracy and terrorismspecifically, are there any technologiesthat you could suggest that might help toprotect seafarers from these threats?

JE – It’s all about awareness, avoidance,and support if it happens. Informationabout the threats, dynamic informationabout what’s happening in this area of sea,and over the last 24 hours, is important.

Ships can become isolated,so they need informationupon which to base decisionson what to do.

Avoidance is knowingwhat to do immediately withthe ships to minimise thechance of being the one shipthat gets singled out – mak-ing your ship less of a targetthan anyone else.

Then, if a ship is attacked,facilitation of support isimportant, there often seems to be a breakdown in communication, partiallybecause the channels of com-munication are quite limited.Information sharing for thatsupport is needed.

However, technologydepends on training to use,so whatever is provided isuseless unless the crew isproperly trained to use it.

NB – I went to a talk froma British captain whorecounted his experience ofbeing hijacked, and quiteclearly the ability to commu-nicate with the company overhow to deal with the pirateswas a huge thing, so havingtechnologies that facilitatethat would be beneficial.

I’ve also been on someships with video cameraswhere you can see what’sgoing on via the internet, sothe idea of video streamingand conferencing with multi-ple functions could serve apurpose.

I’ve also read of other sit-uations where ships haveavoided being hijacked bythe crew retreating to acitadel and then naval offi-cers coming on board anddealing with the pirates.What occurred to me wasthat there is no communica-tional control of the shipfrom that space, you’re quiteisolated and inside someblack box.

So a secure space withsome communication to theoutside world would begood. I don’t know how fea-sible it would be, but youcould also add to that some-thing like an electronic chartand control of the steeringmaybe.

DM – As the networkoperator, we’re regulatedcommunications serviceproviders and have rulesand processes to followwhen it comes to assistance,



DM – We see many clever companiesout there that can use the data to makemoney, be it condition monitoring, enginemanagement whatever it is. But what’s thebenefit to the mariner in terms of safety?

There are benefits to the owner, maybethe person leasing the engine, but thesethings have to be kept separate from safety.

KH – In terms of keeping the data safe,

I think that the Flag States are catching upwith technology, we’ve had an explosionof technology of all of this informationbecoming available.

It comes back to those Flag States, onone level, to be the administrators on thatinformation and make the decisions onsafety and security, but in the IT worldsome of that administration comes back to

the data owner, which is the vessel itself orthe company that owns the vessel. It willjust take some time for them all to catch upwith this ‘data explosion’.

DP – It’s interesting looking at the PRvalue of this, it could be a way of attract-ing people to engage with the industry,looking at cargo and ship trade and vari-ous other aspects of shipping.

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Digital Shipand that means that you have to hope thatthe pirates don’t decide to pull all commsimmediately and cause complete denial ofcommunication, leaving the crew isolated.

KH – We have found that the piracyissue does not necessarily lend itself to atechnology solution. A lot of the time thesolution is more of an agreement situation.

There are lots of technologies availableto say where the ship is, and tell theauthorities where they are going, so weneed to keep all of these vessels advisedand appraised of what’s going on to helpprotect them.

Technology can do almost anythingyou want it to do, if you give an engineera problem he can solve it, but the mainproblem is getting the cooperation and thepolitical scenario organised rather thanfinding a technical solution.

DP – It’s important that people look atthe ship as a whole, with the proceduresand the training. It’s a complete package,you will be using the technology with thetraining and the procedures to deal withpiracy.

I’ve read reviews of some pirate attackswhere the best weapon the crew had wasturning out the lights, and the piratescouldn’t figure out how to turn the lightsback on.

HP – In places like Somalia using thetracking to see vessels coming in andknowing when they’re going to arrivecould definitely help.

BL – I have a philosophy that the mes-sage needs to be to keep it simple – makesure you know what your processes are,and that you’re well practised.

The crew needs to know exactly whatit’s going to do when it comes under attack,whether it’s squirt a hose over the side orturn off the lights, but particularly theyneed to know how to put out a distress callto get help. It’s a very difficult situation,and it’s happening all over the world.

I think the citadel idea is one of the bet-ter ones – lock yourself away and makesure you’ve got the comms, CCTV, chartdisplays and all the rest.

JH – Piracy is a business, the reasonthey’re out there, in Somalia, is that theycan’t do their traditional business of fishinganymore. In the Gulf of Aden, with thenaval forces there, it’s stopped making busi-ness sense so they’ve turned to people traf-ficking. The solution isn’t a technical solu-tion, it’s to sort out the problems in Somalia.

I think the worst thing you can do isshow aggression, because they’ll just comeback with more aggression. What youhave to do is have a passive device whichdenies the pirates the ability to take theship and move it into an area where theycan control it.

I don’t know how the technologywould work, but being able to trip themain engine from ashore, so it can’t bestarted and the captain or chief engineerdon’t have the ability to start it, would begood.

BR – Maybe if we get a few thousandyears into the future we’ll have Klingontechnology to cloak the vessel so it can’t beseen! I think it’s a political thing more thananything, and the Western world needs tohelp out in this.

All communications rely on GNSS, andthe ability to knock out GNSS by GPS jam-ming can be bought on eBay for £75. Youcould knock out all three channels for upto 20 nautical miles easily, as well as Wi-Fi, and these things are being bought bythe criminal element.

eLoran would be one solution to that,but a more immediate solution would beto have anti-jamming devices, which Iknow the MoD are working on.

NB – Thinking about delegating controlof the engine to the shore, it occurs to methat it would create a hostage situationunless the crew were secure. If they hadhold of them they would just say ‘we’llshoot the crew until you turn it on’, so itcould end up putting them at greater risk.

Q – IMO's much talked about e-Navigation strategy aims to harmoniseall of the systems used in the navigationof vessels, on ship and on shore – couldyou tell us what you think it might meanto the industry in terms of developmentsin the use of technology?

KH – Ourselves and our competitionwill probably be a big part of providingthe links and the data for this, so we’resupportive of that, but the important partis where it all leads.

Technology can be injected into theindustry, but by itself it can create asmany problems as answers. You need the training. We don’t want a situationwhere people move away from responsi-bility and say ‘it’s not me doing it, it’s thecomputer’.

DM – We’re working with some part-ners on the edge of this on integratedbridges, and trying to collect the data viasatellite. The technology is there to do it

today, progress will be about how youcoordinate it and regulate it. We can col-lect the data from anywhere on the planet,but how that is presented in the applica-tion layer is a key point.

We’re working in the EfficienSea proj-ect [EU-backed maritime data exchangeprogramme looking at e-Navigation]doing testing in the Baltic Sea later thisyear, and that’s about asking the end usersabout the types of applications they want to see as part of e-Navigation – it willbe interesting to see what comes out of the pilot.

BR – It’s a complex issue, I think theimportant thing to recognise is that all ofthe devices are already there, and we wantto integrate and harmonise them.

We’ve done some work in the RNLI ona system called SIMS, an integrated man-agement system on board, which is onebig black box with all the components inthere and one screen at each seat wherethey can select the bit of information theywant. So I’ll watch this space with greatinterest to see how it will translate intobetter management of SAR information,for example.

JH – The more I come to understand e-Navigation I see it as a ‘re-looking’ at thewhole infrastructure that helps a ship nav-igate from A to B.

If we look over the last 200 years shipshaven’t really changed in the way thatthey navigate – obviously there are thingslike radar, gyro, Loran, GPS, ECDIS, thesehave all come along but they’re followingthe original philosophy. A navigator of200 years ago could still go on the bridgeand follow the system he was taught.

As I see it e-Navigation is a review ofthe whole thing to see if this can be donemore efficiently and bring everythingtogether.

BL – There’s some really good workgoing on within e-Navigation, but it’s stillsuch a fluid subject that nobody reallyknows exactly what it’s going to be.People need to sort out user needs, fromthe shore side and the ship side and lookat what the advantages will be.

I can think of lots of reasons why youshould ease some of the load on themariner, with crewing reducing butmore to be done on the ship. We need toaddress what the guy on the bridge look-ing out the window really needs to con-cern himself with. Let’s find the user

‘It’s important that people look at the ship as a whole, with the procedures and training’– David Patraiko, Nautical Institute (right); with (l-r) Dr Jonathan Earthy, Lloyd’s Register;

and Dr Nick Bailey, Seafarers International Research Centre

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needs first, and then design a system tomeet those user needs.

HP – There is a problem with a lot oftechnology that it is a solution looking fora problem – companies have a clever thingthey can do and want to see what they canapply it to.

From a data provider point of view Ithink e-Navigation is very much aboutintegration of data sets, and I wouldextend that beyond pure navigation. It’smore about all of the logistics of moving avessel around and delivering a cargo, so Ithink what the future will see is integra-tion of information covering all of thoseaspects – engine monitoring, voyage effi-ciency, information from shore about pira-cy, and all of those things.

From a navigation data point of viewit’s about moving everything into a digitalenvironment and providing decision sup-port tools. The feedback we get is that peo-ple don’t want computers taking over,they want the clutter taken away andthings made easier for them. If a computerproposes a solution they want to see why.

DP – e-Navigation is not a black box,it’s not a system, you’re not going to ‘plugit in’. e-Navigation is a concept, and to mymind the most important part of that con-cept is harmonisation. At the end of theday it’s to support decision making.

Before the IMO takes on a work pack-age like this it requires the industry todefine the critical need for it. In terms of e-Navigation the critical need was that,without harmonisation, the existing andevolving technology would be in danger

of becoming highly complex, highly frag-mented, and very difficult to use – hinder-ing good decision making.

To highlight some of the user needsthat have already been identified andagreed by IMO, one is using harmonisa-tion to standardise automated reporting.Ships have to report the same informa-tion over and over again to differentauthorities ashore – we can harmonisethat so you report once and that informa-tion is shared.

Alarms are another issue, it’s very easyto have in excess of 500 separate alarms onthe bridge of a ship, which is distracting –harmonising those alarms will hopefullybe an outcome of e-Navigation.

With all this integration comes the needfor improved reliability, and I very muchhope that e-Navigation will look at issuesof reliability, because as these systemsbecome more integrated and better deci-sion making tools they have to be reliable.

Ship-shore communications also areabsolutely crucial for e-Navigation, how-ever I don’t think that it should beassumed that e-Navigation equals high-bandwidth. I’m sure that as time goes onwe will inevitably use more bandwidth ifit’s available, but it’s not necessarily arequirement.

NB – I would reiterate the point that itmust be user-led, not just in terms of func-tionality but in terms of how it is present-ed. Too often the equipment is just com-plex in the user interface.

Equally there are issues in training andmanuals – from our own research we are

finding that training is causing a problem,new equipment is put on board, they don’tget enough training and the manuals areoften far from adequate. With multina-tional crews the manuals may not even bein an appropriate language.

Thinking about harmonisation, one areawould be the ability for Port States andcoastal authorities to get local informationto ships in a readily available form. At themoment it comes in VHF warnings, NAV-TEX, Inmarsat-C messages and so on.

If you think of the case of the Tricolor[which sank in 2002] in the EnglishChannel, several ships ran into it eventhough messages were being broadcast. Ifthat could have been presented on myECDIS I could see a warning in that spotand avoid it.

Paperwork and forms are another thingthat comes up, not just arrival papers butimmigration, information for charterersand so on. If it was possible to have a sin-gle database where you could enter all ofyour information and that could be dis-tributed in the different forms required asthe ship approached, that could savemariners a lot of work.

JE – e-Navigation is about dataexchange as much as anything, andbecause there will continue to be a band-width issue, or a need to manage band-width, we’re looking at a rather sophisti-cated data system architecture.

If you’re trying to optimise the band-width then where does the data live, andwhich is the true data? Presumably whatyou will report in each direction will be

just changes, so we’re talking about hav-ing a highly integrated system with a setof data on the ship and a set of dataashore, and the communication will beabout passing over the differences.

That would mean creating a massiveICT system, possibly the most complexICT system ever created in the world.With this there will be a strong data inputor data validation activity on the ship, sothere’s going to be an increased data inputresponsibility for people on the ship,though in return they will get more infor-mation to use for decision making.

There will be new roles on the shoreand on the ship, and we need to definethese as much as we need to define theinformation systems, we need to knowwhat those new jobs are rather than justletting them emerge. If they just emergethey won’t relate closely to safe and effi-cient operations. Merely harmonising thedata won’t harmonise the system.

BR – I saw a presentation by UKHOrecently highlighting some of the incom-patibility between some of the standardsused [for electronic charts], S57, S58 and soon, which was producing some horren-dous results in terms of the informationdisplayed on ECDIS. Whatever we do,looking at harmonisation again, the stan-dards must be written in a very robust,understandable way so we don’t get a con-flict in the future.

Q – As a further point on e-Navigation -how far are we from getting the variousavailable technologies effectively and



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p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:42 Page 11

robustly integrated? What big stum-bling blocks are left to be overcome - are political will and bureaucracy a big-ger issue than developments in technol-ogy? Will politics always lag behind thetechnology?

JE – There is a truly massive scalabilityissue, we’re talking about a new architec-ture in order to optimise bandwidth andwe’re doing it internationally. There arevery few successful private or govern-ment-led massive information systems, letalone those that integrate this much.

Against the background of this beingphenomenally difficult to do, withoutbeing critical I don’t see the ability withinIMO to manage massive IT projects withthis level of complexity.

The bottom line of that is, whatever theaspirations, we won’t get thatfar. What we need to be sureof is that, whatever is deliv-ered, it doesn’t make the situ-ation worse than it is now.

A half-implemented sys-tem, but with legal require-ments to use certain sorts ofinformation might actuallyleave mariners worse off.There should be clearprogress, maybe with astaged implementation ofclear steps.

NB – The equipment ismade by a number of com-peting manufacturers, and Iknow that the concept is thatthere would be a commondefault position that theywould all work to as a start-ing point, and then they canadd extra functionality, but Idon’t know if that’s realistic.They sell their products ontheir distinctiveness andcost.

Even ships coming intoEuropean ports have to pres-ent different information todifferent authorities. I wentto a meeting about short seashipping and one of theproblems discussed wasships going into someEuropean rivers, and on one

side of the river they’ve got to give one setof information, and on the other side theyhave to give completely different informa-tion. They couldn’t come to agreement onharmonisation of what was required byboth sets of authorities.

I think there are real issues about frag-mentation of jurisdiction – getting peopleto agree on that is a major challenge.

DP – One of the major ‘white elephants’is the quality issue, and integrity of thesesystems and data. Historically in the com-mercial shipping sector, all of the systemswe have had, like radars, AIS, GPS, Loran,ECDIS – they’ve all been brought in as aidsto navigation. They haven’t been specifical-ly designed to be wholly relied on.

We have type approval and certainstandards, but nobody has said that you’re

going to ‘fly by wire’, everybody’s sayingthat you still look out the window and stilluse terrestrial navigation.

However, slowly we’re getting thiscreep of people relying on them, particu-larly with the younger generation who aremore computer savvy, and as the systemsbecome more integrated the complexityrequires enormous levels of integrity andreliability compared with standalone sys-tems. That will cost – it costs in the equip-ment, in the installations, in the training.

It’s easy to talk about an integrated sys-tem linking lots of bits together – but thosebits have never been designed to be reliedon as part of a safety system.

We’re slowly moving that way, and ifwe don’t recognise this what we’re goingto find is that we’ll have defined the inte-

gration but won’t have the integrityrequired. Then no-one will trust the sys-tem and it won’t be reliable.

It has to be established, tested, trialled,and all of these things – I think that’s amajor issue that we’re not talking aboutyet in a lot of these debates, and that willbe the acid test.

HP – The standards are going to take along time. If you look at the examples withthe forms already mentioned, if you goround the world there are thousands ofdifferent forms in different formats, withsilly differences like American dates orUK dates. Getting some sort of harmonisa-tion on the data formats is going to take avery long time.

BL – Legislation has moved forwardand caught up in as much as the new stan-dards that have been introduced in the lastfew years for integrated navigation sys-tems, but it does make that one piece ofequipment something that everyone maycome to rely on.

You want to make sure that all of theequipment talks to each other in a propermanner, and reliability absolutelybecomes a key issue. It’s fascinating theway things are going, but we mustn’t gettoo carried away with it and imaginesomething which may not be achievable,or might be out of date before its time.

JH – If you consider networks whereyou put all of this equipment together,who’s going to take responsibility if somepart of the system fails? Over the last 20years, with all of the new products thathave come along from the manufacturers,they’ve started off very expensive and by the time they’re into the marketthey’re virtually giving them away to getmarket share.

In the 1980s a new colour ARPA radarwas £30,000, plus cables and installation –


Digital Ship

‘If you go round the world, there are thousands of different forms in different formats’ – Hugh Phillips, UKHO (second from right); with (l-r) Dr Nick Bailey, SIRC; David Patraiko, Nautical Institute; and Peter Blackhurst, Inmarsat

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at the time you could buy a small housefor that. Now an ARPA radar might costyou £8,000 or £10,000, installed witheverything – you’d now need at least 10ARPAs to buy a house!

Every time a requirement comes outfrom IMO, by the time it comes to the fit-ting day, the prices are down to about one-fifth of the original price. As we go for-ward, who’s going to want to take the riskof putting these systems together?

BR – I don’t think the manufacturerswill take that risk, they won’t manufacturethe equipment if they can’t afford to do it,no matter what the regulations say.Manufacturers are market driven, they seea gap in the market and manufacturebased on that, and they can do it veryquickly.

The technology changes very quickly,the political side, the standards side, isalways lagging behind, and always willbecause of the complexity of how it’s setup. It takes years to do these things.

DM – Because it’s such a complex,multinational effort of people sittingaround a table trying to coordinate andget this done, invariably what happens isthat the manufacturers will say ‘We can doall of this now, here’s our system’. Thenit’s a question of how useful that is, howconfigurable it is, and whether it can get toa level of reliability that can be unilateral-ly agreed.

KH – Politics will always lag behindtechnology, mainly because the job oftechnology is to deal with limitations orhindrances and find a way round them –and to some degree the technology indus-try sees politics as one of those challenges!

A classic example is AIS over satellite –the authorities said ‘we need a high-fre-quency system delivering lots of informa-tion that we can put in a big database toknow about every ship in the world’. Theydidn’t go to IMO for this, they started put-ting the technology on satellites and arenow starting to get that informationthrough. So this is an example of how thatlag will always be there.

Q – GMDSS is soon to be subject to a‘scoping study’ by IMO, over at least thenext two sessions of COMSAR - what areyour views on the successes and limita-tions of the system?

BR – There is quite a long lead time intothis, because of the political connections

and standards connections involved, butwithout any doubt I would say, from aSAR perspective, don’t fix what’s not bro-ken. Add whatever you can to the system,which is reliable.

The future addition of satellite commu-nications is an obvious one, MF, for exam-ple, is a very expensive method of com-municating long-range. The equipment,the shore-based aerials, are very expensiveto maintain, and the solutions are alreadythere for satellite technology. I think thereis definitely a place for handheld or fixedinstallations on ships to contribute toGMDSS.

DM – At the end of the day, theproviders of those [satellite] networks, likeourselves who are not officially included[in GMDSS] yet, are led by market

demand. Whilst these scoping studies andother things progress, more and moreother methods of communicating distressare being used. That’s fine, but it’s notfully regulated. As a network we have togo at the pace of IMO and COMSAR andrespond accordingly when it comes toGMDSS.

JE – Because it’s a safety system therestill has to be emphasis on it being simpleand reliable, and maintaining the verybasics. What we had in the original stan-dard was user interface requirements, butthat was probably as much as we couldagree that could be implemented as con-sistently as it could be.

DP – There’s huge value in the conceptand infrastructure of GMDSS, but theonboard usability of it can be atrocious.

There are standalone systems, not oftenused, the interfaces are widely different,the procedures for setting up DSC calls arecomplex and aren’t being used much. Youshouldn’t need to worry about that, youjust need to make a call and all the cleverstuff should be done inside the box.

The Ukraine produced a paper to IMOrecently, noting that GMDSS and AIS bothhave MMSI in common and asking whycan’t you click on an AIS target with yourmouse and select ‘call using DSC’. Therewas a lot of support for that.

I don’t know how technically feasiblethat is, but that fits with the concept ofharmonising the systems. WhetherGMDSS comes under e-Navigation isbeing debated, but I hope the approach tousability will be the same.

BL – There’s too much talk going on atthe moment saying ‘we must change thisand this’. At the moment we need to lookat the bigger picture and see which bitsactually work, and then leave those alone.My personal view is that GMDSS per se isactually a good system. It has some partson the edges which may be ragged andoutdated, and certainly the biggest prob-lem is the communications within it,which are very outdated.

I think integration with the systemsyou are using on a day-to-day basis, hav-ing a direct connection to that red button,is absolutely vital. At the moment a wholerack of equipment generally sits on theside and spews out paper with some infor-mation on it that’s not integrated else-where. There is so much scope for improv-ing on this, but we have to still be awarethat there are still states that haven’t evenimplemented GMDSS at the basic VHFlevel, so you can’t go rushing ahead.

We also have to take the perspective oflooking to 15 years time, and if the tech-nology will still be helpful. There aresome good ideas out there, and I’m suresome people are going to throw some realcurve balls in there, but that’s just a start-ing point.



‘Every time a requirement comes out from IMO, by the time it comes to the fitting daythe prices are down to about one-fifth of the original price’ – John Hardcastle,

Joining Shackle (right); with Peter Blackhurst, Inmarsat

Part 2 of the Digital Ship round tablediscussion on the role of technology inseafarer safety, covering Integrationof �avigation and Communications;Training and Technology; and FutureDevelopments, will appear in the September 2010 issue

DS

CHART AGENCY LTD.NAUTICAL INFORMATION SPECIALISTS

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www.nautinst.org

The latest book by Digital Ship consultingwriter on navigation, Dr Andy Norris, hasbeen launched by the Nautical Institute

‘ECDIS and Positioning’ aims to pro-vide mariners with a thorough ground-ing in all aspects of ECDIS and the use ofelectronic charts, an issue of vital impor-tance to the industry ahead of the 2012deadline for the first vessels to requiremandatory ECDIS.

The book argues that excessive confi-dence is being placed in the sole use ofGPS for positioning information, mainlydue to the inadequacy of training.

The use of ECDIS is fundamental dif-ferent to using paper charts, and the tran-sition from paper charts to electronicposes a challenge for the industry, particu-larly for those who have no current expe-rience of electronic charts.

Important bridge procedures are signif-icantly affected, and these require carefulanalysis and consideration if ECDIS assist-ed groundings are to be avoided.

“If you have little or no knowledge ofelectronic charts, ECDIS and Positioning isa must-read,” said Dr Norris.

“If you have some knowledge, the bookwill improve your understanding andapproach to the use of electronic charts. Ifyou have good knowledge, the book’s

approach will make you think a littleharder as to how ECDIS can improve stan-dards of navigation.”

Dr Norris believes that users need todevelop an ECDIS ‘mindset’, with thesignificant differences in the skills need-ed to use ECDIS compared with usingpaper charts requiring a major adjust-ment in a seafarer’s approach, to ensuresafe navigation.

Once mastered, ECDIS provides themeans to improve navigational safety butthis is not achieved just by the completionof a short course, he said.

“The skills have to be developed andhoned in the context of the knowledgegained at the course and other sources ofguidance. The use of ECDIS, in general, isnot paper chart techniques transferred to ascreen,” Dr Norris said.

Nautical Institute president CaptainRichard Coates used the launch to air hisconcern about the ‘inadequacy’ of ECDIStraining with the deadline looming.

“Despite the long use of satellite sys-tems for positioning and the imminentmandating of electronic charts in 2012,there is little information written for themariner concerning the practical use ofthese technologies,” he said.

“Many are grappling with the prob-lems of using electronic charts and ECDISafter being trained on paper charts.”

At a seminar to launch thebook, Capt Nick Nash, a servingmaster from Princess Cruises,added: “Mariners need to havein-depth training on this newequipment and fully under-stand its limitations. DrNorris's book goes along wayto help achieve this.”

“It is a well timed, neededand useful book which fullysupports the Institute's viewthat the IMO model course1.27 is too shallow – particu-larly as some training estab-lishments have squeezedthe 40 hour course intothree days!”

The Nautical Institutenotes that ECDIS technol-ogy will be of very littlebenefit in enhancingnavigational safety if thewatchkeeping officer isnot fully trained andproperly qualified in its use.

The Institute says that its ownresearch shows that most mariners feelthat more effective training is needed, andthat publishing these best practice guidesis a step in the right direction in raisingawareness.

ECDIS and Positioning, the second vol-ume of Dr Norris’ Integrated Bridge Systemsseries, is available from The NauticalInstitute at www.nautinst.org.


Digital Ship

DS

ECDIS and Positioning book launched

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MM itsui O.S.K. Lines hasannounced the completion ofthe concept for its third in a

series of next-generation vessels, which itsays will be technically practical in thenear future.

The latest concept is for an environ-ment-friendly, large-scale iron ore carriercalled the ISHIN-III, that the companyhopes will play a key role in futureresource transport.

MOL has arrived at this design bybuilding on the the work done in creatingits very large iron ore carrier Brasil Maru,already in operation, that uses a numberof new technologies for energy-saving andenvironmental protection.

Delivered in December 2007, the320,000-DWT Brasil Maru (Length: 340m;width: 60m; main engine output:23,000kW) is one of the worlds largest ironore carriers, and was named the Ship ofthe Year 2007 by The Japan Society ofNaval Architects and Ocean Engineers.

The ISHIN-III makes full use of thecharacteristics of that vessel class, aimingto further reduce MOL's environmentalburden by maximising the use of tech-nologies the company has developed andadopted.

ISHIN-III's two main features are toemploy waste heat energy recovery toassist propulsion, and to reduce CO2emissions, even at low speeds.

MOL says that a large amount of heatenergy can be recovered from the largemain engine's exhaust gas, converted toelectricity, and utilised to provide addi-tional propulsion, significantly reducingthe vessel's environmental burden.

This technology could also be appliedto large main engines installed on tankersand containerships.

To reduce CO2 the combination of a

turbocharger that can operate at highefficiency even at low rpm and an elec-tronically-controlled main engine hasbeen employed.

MOL says that by adopting a combina-tion of these new technologies CO2 emis-sions will be reduced by 30 per cent.

MOL is also involved in the 'WindChallenger Project', which aims to reduceoverall CO2 emissions by over 50 per centthrough the development of wind-drivenvessels.

This project is led by Tokyo University,MOL, Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, and a numberof other ocean shipping and shipbuildingcompanies.

MOL named its first concept vessel"ISHIN-I (ishin one)," which stands for"Innovations in Sustainability backed byHistorically proven, INtegrated technolo-gies." Ishin is also the Japanese word for acomplete revitalisation or reform.

The new concept ship is the third in thisseries.

Other features of ISHIN-III include fea-tures to reduce friction, optimise propul-sion and hull efficiency, and increasingshore based support.

The ship will adopt the latest in ultra-low friction ship bottom coatings, in whichsmooth micro patterned indentations formon the painted surface, trapping water andreducing friction drag, while a drasticallyimproved hull form below the surfaceshould enhance fuel efficiency.

Propeller Boss Cap Fins (PBCF), anMOL-developed energy-saving deviceadopted on more than 1,700 vessels all overthe world, are featured, but as an upgradedmodel with high-efficiency propellers.

ISHIN-III will additionally have whatMOL calls an 'optimum voyage supportsystem' which will receive marine weatherinformation while monitoring voyage con-

ditions, and will search for the shortestand most fuel-efficient route, in considera-tion of the vessel’s unique characteristics.

Solar battery panels will be installed onthe aft decks of the concept ship. The elec-tricity generated while under way will beused for part of the propulsion forceand/or stored in the high-capacityrechargeable lithium ion batteries.

This stored electricity can be used whilethe vessel is in port or berthed.

In other news, MOL has also completedconstruction of its new, environmentally-friendly maritime technology researchcentre in the Kurigi District of KawasakiMicom City, Japan.

The centre has a range of environment-friendly, energy-saving features and tech-

nologies, using solar power energy, andhas a natural lighting system, ice storagevariant refrigerant volume (VRV) system,and high-speed Variable Air Volume(VAV) system.

The VRV technology uses ice madeduring the night to cool the air in thebuilding during the day, reducing peak-time use of electricity.

The facility also has a laboratory thatcan accommodate two 40-foot reefer con-tainers and a test engine room with soundinsulation and vibration-proof devices.

The new centre will act as a hub forMOL research and development effortsinto ways to improve safety, reduce costs,and introduce environment-friendly tech-nologies into the maritime industry.



MOL completes design of latest concept vessels

MOL’s new ship design aims to reduce emissions by combining advances in energyconservation in a number of different areas

DS

The latest concept ship design from MOL promises to employ new technologies to reduce CO2 emissions by 30 per cent

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Panel Discussions

Invitation only event

Participating Listed Shipping Companies

For more information and to register, please visit www.capitallink.com, email ([email protected])or call +1 (212) 661-7566.

2nd Posidonia Analyst & Investor Day

Save the Date

Global Derivatives Forumnd Annual2

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AA nybody interested in the naviga-tion of large machines - and peo-ple's interaction with them -

would probably enjoy reading ‘Fly byWire’, a new book by William Langewi-esche about the US Airways Flight 1549which lost two engines after hitting geesein New York on January 15, 2009.

You probably already know the mainfacts of the story - how the aeroplane (anAirbus) hit a flock of Canada geese lessthan two minutes after take-off, whichresulted in both engines being put out ofaction, and the aeroplane making an emer-gency landing in the freezing HudsonRiver a few minutes later. Everybody sur-vived and the pilot was a hero.

In this book, William Langewiesche, aninternational correspondent with VanityFair and having 15 years experience as aprofessional pilot himself, looks deeperinto the story - and in particular, the role

the Airbus plane took in ensuring every-body's survival.

A little known fact revealed in the storyis that Airbus made a controversial deci-sion in the early 1980s to include automa-tion systems on their planes which thepilot could not switch off - unlike onBoeing planes.

The logic goes something like this:when you need to do something difficultwith an aeroplane - such as reduce speedas low as you can without the planefalling out of the sky, to ensure a safelanding on water, or accelerate up as fastas possible without the accelerationbreaking the plane apart - maybe 10 percent of pilots could accurately push theplane close to its limits under severe psy-chological stress, ensuring highest chanceof survival. For the other 90 per cent,there are automation systems which cando it for them.

Bernard Ziegler, the Airbus engineer(and also ex-test and fighter pilot) whofirst pushed Airbus to install sophisticat-ed 'fly by wire' systems in the early 1980s,presents simple logic for why pilotsshould not be able to switch off the 'go tothe edge' automation system – the sametype of pilots who are likely to end uptaking the aircraft beyond its physicallimits are also the same type of pilots whowould want to switch these automationsystems off.

If the automation system can be over-ridden, there is barely any point in havingit at all.

Technology like this helped Airbusgrow to the point where it could competewith Boeing - its planes were designed tobe easier to fly.

Mr Ziegler also designed a sophisticat-ed system of control loops run by differentcomputers, so that if one system failedanother would take its place with a lesssophisticated level of control - somethinganyone who has been interested in shipcontrol systems, and how to make theminfallible, will probably be interested in.

Mr Ziegler fully understands that thereis no such thing as making somethingcompletely safe, there are only differingprobabilities of accidents - but when youreach the point where the probability ofhuman error is higher than the probabili-ty of electronic error then maybe it is timeto give the electronics more control. Henotes that more people are killed by pilotsthan aeroplanes.

Mr Ziegler also argues that many pilotshave a flawed idea of what their role is,which is to be managers of systems, notmasters of the skies. In any case, very fewpilots of passenger planes really are mas-ters of the skies - they spend their careersflying aircraft within very narrow param-eters and do not necessarily remembereverything they learned in their trainingor previous careers.

As you might expect, Mr Ziegler is aveteran of many fights with pilot unions,but he also appears to be one of the fewpeople in the world who feel able to criti-cise pilots. Many people believe that pilotscan never be wrong - including, it seemsfrom the book, many pilots themselves.

However, just like with seafarers, oneof the most important psychological characteristics of a pilot is the ability toadmit to mistakes and then rectify them -several accidents, such as the AmericanAirlines crash of December 20, 1995, inColombia can partially be attributed topilots making mistakes which they hadtime to rectify, but did not immediatelydo so as they seemed unable to admit,

even to themselves, that they had made a mistake.

Many pilots are never involved in any-thing particularly dangerous over thecourse of their whole careers, spendingtheir time flying planes within the narrowparameters, and very few leave the profes-sion once they have entered it.

There are plenty of other facts withinthis book which maritime readers mightfind interesting - including the point thataviation voyage data recorder data is auto-matically erased every few hours (some-thing the pilot unions pushed for); birdsentering an aircraft engine are turned toliquid; and aviation engines aren't actuallydesigned to survive large geese strikes(materials are not available to makeengines that strong), although they aretested for their survivability from attacksfrom smaller birds by firing dead birdsinto the engines in a testing centre andrecording what happens with a many-frame-per-second camera.

In the book Mr Langewiesche does notin any way criticise Captain ChelseySullenberger of Flight 1749, or say thatAirbus planes are safer than Boeings(their safety records are actually verysimilar), nor does he say that the passen-gers would not have survived if it was a Boeing.

However, he does suggest that maybeToulouse's Airbus engineers, and in par-ticular the now retired Bernard Ziegler,deserve more credit for the safe landing ofthe aeroplane which kept it very stable asit approached the water - and perhaps sav-ing many more lives.

BOOK REVIEW


TeroMarineMarine Information Systems

Tero Marine

TM Master V2Fleet Management Suite

TM Master V2Fleet Manager

Airline crash carries lessons for maritime automation

A new book exploring the case of the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ exposes some widely unknown facts aboutaircraft automation systems - information which could have some potentially interesting parallels

with shipboard control systems, writes Karl Jeffery

DS

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BASSFounded in 1997 with Norwegian roots,BASS is a provider of fleet managementsoftware for the maritime industry, count-ing CMA CGM, Stolt Tankers, K Line,NYK, Pacific International Lines andWilh.Wilhelmsen among its more than100 customers

BASSnet is a modular software devel-oped on Microsoft .NET that enables usersto build integrated solutions covering allthe main areas of maritime operations.

Modules of the BASSnet FleetManagement Systems includeMaintenance; Dry-docking; Procurement;KPI Dashboard; Document management;Self assessment (TMSA); Crew/HR man-agement; and Accounting, among others.BASS will be exhibiting at Posidonia2010 at stand 719, where visitors can viewa BASSnet Fleet Management Systemsdemo.

Benefit SoftwareSince its formation 20 years ago, BenefitSoftware has dedicated itself to the devel-opment of applications for the shippingindustry with particular emphasis on theowner / manager segment.

At Posidonia Benefit will demonstrateits new integrated ERP system, and will beon hand to discuss visitors’ software needsin detail.

The ERP system aims to help compa-nies in the management of security andtransparency within their organisations.The applications comply with SOX specifi-cations and fully satisfy TMSA standards.

Benefit uses an open platform for the sys-tem, which is compatible with other thirdparty applications such as communicationsand messaging systems, and documentmanagement/document flow systems.Benefit Software can be found at stand601.

Danaos ManagementConsultants

Danaos Management Consultants hasserved over 500 shipping companiesworld-wide during the past 24 years.

Danaos offers a suite of software utili-ties covering all areas of the daily opera-tion of a shipping company (such as finan-cials, commercial, operations, technical,manning, QA, and communications) bothashore and onboard.

These applications work within a fullyintegrated alert-driven and goal-basedenvironment, that has embedded KPI meas-urements and is fully TMSA-compliant.

The software is also complemented byoutsourcing services via Danaos India.

Danaos offers solutions for efficientfuel procurement and optimal fuel con-sumption en route through the DanaosOptimal Routing service, and is involvedwith 'Virtual Maritime Services', a newventure that offers a software-as-a-service

monthly rental model and also additionalhosting, disaster recovery and relatedonline services.Danaos can be found at stand number 243.

DREAMTECH SoftwareGreek-based DREAMTECH is a softwarevendor providing maritime messagingand shipbroking solutions.

The flagship product of the company,to be demonstrated at Posidonia 2010, isCOMPASSng, a messaging software toolfor shipping and shipbroking companies.

The core functionality of COMPASSngis a messaging service which allows usersto search efficiently through massivequantities of messages.

The system contains a fully integratedaddress book, activity planner, advancedHTML editors and spam handling, andcan handle connection to a PABX andother instant messengers.

Specialised integrated modules forshipbrokers include a sale and purchasemodule, and a dry and tanker charteringmodule. Data can be accessed from mobilephones, with auto-update of positions andorders available from the database.DREAMTECH can be found at standnumber 562.

Fugro SeastarFugro Seastar will be showing its newMarineSTAR manoeuvring system atPosidonia.

The MarineSTAR system has beendesigned to assist large ships in berthingand when manoeuvring in confinedwaters, as well as providing dynamic foreand aft trim measurement to aid bunkerfuel optimisation.

The company has already been activefor a number of years in the delivery ofsatellite based, high performance positionreference services for offshore DynamicPositioning applications. With the intro-duction of the MarineSTAR this technolo-

gy has now been extended to applicationsfor commercial shipping.Fugro Seastar can be found at stand 726.

Globe WirelessGlobe Wireless, the newest InmarsatDistribution Partner, is a provider of totalsolutions in the field of communications,operational and IT solutions to the mar-itime industry.

The company serves over 550 shipoperators with over 9,600 ships using itsproducts and services, which includeInmarsat FleetBroadband, IridiumOpenPort, Ku-band and C-band VSAT.

Globe Wireless designs, builds, sells,installs, supports, and services all of theproducts and services that are offered tocustomers. Applications include vesseltracking, shipboard antivirus, crew GSMand SMS solutions, forms, eNOAD, crewnews and weather solutions. Globe Wireless can be found at boothnumber 450/5, in the USA Pavilion.

IBS Marine ConsultingGroup

IBS Marine Consulting Group will be pre-senting its software-based systems fortraining documentation and QHSE man-agement at Posidonia 2010.

The company will particularly befocusing on risk and vetting services at theevent, including its services and productsfor SMS reviews, its Risk Manager soft-ware and other incident investigation andvetting systems.

Computer based training (CBT) toolsand a job hazard / risk assessment libraryare also available as part of the portfolio.

IBS will additionally hold a dedicatedrisk and vetting solutions presentation dur-ing the exhibition, in the Posidonia seminarroom on Wednesday evening, at 17.15.Visitors can find the IBS stand in hall 2,number 259.

Iridium CommunicationsIridium will showcase its range of marinesatellite communication products andservices at Posidonia, including IridiumOpenPort, Iridium 9555 handset and LRITsolutions.

The Iridium OpenPort broadbandmarine satellite system offers global IP-based voice and data connectivity forships at sea, with three independentphone circuits plus a separate data port

with speeds up to 128 kbps. The terminal’santenna unit has no moving parts.

The Iridium 9555 handset is a globalmobile satellite phone, providing users withvoice connectivity anywhere on the planet.

Iridium also provides LRIT connectionsover all the world’s oceans, and is the onlyLRIT communication service provider thatcovers Sea Area 4.Visit Iridium at stand number 266.

Jeppesen MarineJeppesen is a provider of navigational andoperational solutions to support decision-making in commercial maritime opera-tions, providing services to thousands ofcommercial ships and shipping companiesaround the world.

Jeppesen says that it was one of the firstcompanies in the world to offer digitalchart data to commercial shipping, andnow supplies electronic charts, includingofficial electronic chart data (ENCs),weather and met-ocean data, weatherrouting and voyage optimisation services. Visitors to Posidonia can get more infor-mation about Jeppesen's range of com-mercial maritime products at the compa-ny's stand, number 276.

JRCSet sail to the JRC stand at Posidonia thisyear to discover its newest-generation ofproducts.

Products exhibited will include, amongothers, the JRC ECDIS solution, a 23-inchmulti-functional ECDIS system fully com-patible with IMO requirements.

JRC will also display its new (D)GPSnavigator, which includes a 3D highwaydisplay mode which can be used to showthe Great Circle and Rhumb line for thesame route. It also integrates four config-urable NMEA ports, with an advancedLAN connection that facilitates inter-switching.

JRCs FleetBroadband 250 andFleetBroadband 500 systems will addition-ally be on show at Posidonia. Visit JRC at stand 344.

Kongsberg MaritimeWith a focus on automation solutions and‘green ship’ systems, vessel performanceis high on the agenda for KongsbergMaritime during Posidonia 2010.

The company will exhibit its K-Chiefmarine automation system, a distributedmonitoring and control system that pro-vides functionality for power manage-ment, auxiliary machinery control, bal-last/bunker monitoring and control, andcargo monitoring and control.

K-Chief can be expanded on three lev-els with several new monitoring and effi-ciency applications. The first application is‘fuel saver monitoring’ for improvedunderstanding of total fuel consumption,which monitors functions such as torque,

POSIDONIA PREVIEW


Maritime IT at PosidoniaThe Posidonia exhibition, held every two years in Athens, Greece, is one of the biggest events in the maritime calendar,

with almost 1,800 exhibitors showcasing every conceivable type of maritime service. A wide range of IT companieswill be among them – Digital Ship asks some of them what they have to offer to visitors

Positioning systems from Fugro Seastar –stand 726

Satcoms on Iridium OpenPort – stand 266

p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:34 Page 19

fuel index, ship speed and hull efficacyand provides information in a format thatcan be used for corrective action.

The second application is ‘fuel saveradvisory’, which, in addition to the fuelsaver monitoring, provides trim and draftoptimisation. The third application is the‘fuel saver optimal advisory’, providingoptimal speed, optimal heading and opti-mal RPM in addition to hull fouling, pro-peller fouling, voyage planning, bunkercost calculation and reports.Kongsberg is at stands 306 and 357.

MarlinkVisitors to the Marlink stand can find outmore about its recent introduction of theComtech Vipersat bandwidth and capaci-ty management platform to its SealinkVSAT solution.

The integration of the Vipersat technol-ogy will provide customers of the Sealinkservice with a range of enhanced features,including efficient management of band-width allocation between vessels, globalautomatic roaming between C-band cov-erage spots and improved quality of serv-ice for both voice and data services.

The Marlink stand will also feature livedemonstrations of how the company’snew Access Controller system can help inthe management of a ship’s onboard satel-lite communications network.

The compact and lightweight systemcan be installed on any vessel to manageswitching between VSAT, IridiumOpenPort or Inmarsat FleetBroadband,helping users to efficiently manage thecosts of satellite communications at sea. Visit Marlink at stand 701.

McMurdoMcMurdo Ltd will be exhibiting its verylatest emergency beacons from theMcMurdo and Kannad Marine ranges atPosidonia, including the new McMurdoS5 AIS SART and Kannad Marine SafelinkAIS SART.

Both models are alternatives to the tra-ditional 9GHz SART, offering a range ofnew features and meeting all the latestregulations.

McMurdo Ltd will also be showing itsrange of Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs)and EPIRBs. In the McMurdo range theseinclude the Fast Find 210 compact PLBand the Smartfind EPIRB, and in theKannad Marine Range, the Safelink EPIRB

browsing, entertainment and ship’s busi-ness while at sea. Visitors to Posidonia can learn more

about MTN’s fixed-price always-on,VSAT service plans at stand number 725.

Navarino Navarino is a satellite communication com-pany, specialising in the maritime industry,and is a ‘Gold’ Inmarsat service provider.

Partially owned by Stratos, Navarinosays it is the largest distributor of Stratosglobally, with a client base of over 500shipping companies in 20 countries.

The company maintains a local pres-ence in Piraeus, Oslo and Singapore, and agrowing reseller’s network.Visitors to Posidonia can learn moreabout Navarino's satellite communica-tion solutions at stand number 201, inhall 2.


Digital Ship

Meet us i Hall 3, stand no. 311 at:n

Sealink – now with Vipersat – stand 701

Fixed price VSAT from MTN – stand 725

and the Safelink Pro PLB. Also on display are the McMurdo

range of emergency radios and NAVTEX. Visit McMurdo at stand number 438B.

MTN SatelliteCommunications

MTN offers broadband VSAT communica-tion products and services for cruise ships,commercial ships and large private yachts.

The company’s C-band and Ku-bandnetworks are supported by what it calls"the industry’s most extensive groundinfrastructure" of teleports, network oper-ation centres, fibre-optic lines and world-wide shipboard service.

This network helps to provide solu-tions for crew calling, e-mail, internet

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NewsLinkNewsLink provides daily news to seafarersby e-mail. The news is country specific,catering to all major seagoing nationalities.

At present there are 38 differentnewsletters available through theNewsLink service. These allow seafarers tokeep abreast of economic developments,marine news and all the latest events in thesports arena in their home region.

Special editions are also produced tocover major sporting events, such as theWorld Cup.

The NewsLink Infotainment DVD ispublished every quarter, containing inter-views with maritime personalities andother useful information about marinesafety and training. Some interactivegames are also contained in theInfotainment DVD.

NewsLink has offices in Cyprus,Greece, India and the Philippines. The company can be found at Posidoniaat the AMMITEC stand, number 342.

On-WavesOn-Waves is a telecommunications serviceprovider in wireless mobile network com-munications offering GSM and CDMA cov-erage, with enhanced services for cruiseships and ferries, cargo ships, and othercustomers using satellite communications.

On-Waves provides an on-board wire-less experience, similar to that which usersexperience on land, to 120,000 travellersper day, both passengers and crew mem-bers alike.

The company is a subsidiary of Siminn(Iceland Telecom), an international mobilephone carrier with more than 500 GSMroaming agreements. On-Waves will present its latest tech-nologies and services to Posidonia visi-tors, whom it invites to visit its booth,number 583.

Otesat-MaritelOtesat-Maritel, a member of the OTEGroup, is a provider of satellite telecom-munications services in the Greek mar-itime industry, and to the global marinesatellite market.

The company provides Inmarsat andIridium services and solutions, includingbroadband systems FleetBroadband (as anInmarsat Distribution Partner) andIridium OpenPort.

Otesat-Maritel also develops and pro-vides value added services such as crewcommunications, data exchange solutionsand web-admin services, and offers satel-lite equipment (as a Thrane & Thrane certi-fied partner), LRIT services, and terminalactivations for Inmarsat (PSA) and Iridium.

The company additionally offers

accounting authority services (GR01 andGR12) and 24/7 customer care support.Otesat-Maritel is inviting Posidonia visi-tors to stand number 247 in Hall 2 toexperience ‘live’ the broadband satellitesystems Inmarsat FleetBroadband andIridium OpenPort, as well as value-added-services.

Raytheon AnschützRaytheon Anschütz is to display its inte-grated navigation systems at Posidonia

Having recently release new features forits Standard 22 gyro compass, RaytheonAnschütz brings the system to Posidonia2010. With increased operational safety andflexibility, the company says that the newfeatures add further value to the world’smost popular gyro compass.

Among the new features is an inde-pendent transmitting magnetic compasspath. With this function, various flag stateauthorities do not require an opticalbypass for the magnetic compass on boardof the vessel.

Raytheon says that this not only increas-es safety, but also offers economical benefits.

Raytheon Anschütz will also displayBridgeControl, its latest generation of inte-grated bridge systems, multifunction sys-tems which integrate radar, ECDIS andconning, making all navigational informa-tion accessible from any display on theintegrated bridge.

All navigation solutions are backed upby a world-wide service network of morethan 200 stations alongside importantshipping routes. The Raytheon Anschütz stand is locatedat booth number 585, in Hall 5.

SatPointSatPoint is a provider of maritime broad-band satellite communications solutionsvia VSAT, offering turnkey-solutions for e-mail, VOIP and GSM service to customersfrom all segments of the maritime sector.

The company offers regional and glob-al VSAT solutions with 24/7 support,actively monitoring, maintaining andoptimising the service to catch problemsbefore they occur. Visitors to Posidonia interested in dis-cussing their VSAT requirements withSatPoint can find the company at stand534-2, in the Swedish Pavilion in hall 5.

SeagullSeagull AS will come to this year’sPosidonia to highlight new functionalityto its computer-based training offeringand the roll out of a series of new productlaunches through 2010.

Seagull Training Administrator (STA),the crew training software, is used bysome 400 clients across the shippingindustry, and on over 7,000 ships. Now,Seagull has launched STA Online, anonline solution to deliver on-demandtraining administration and reporting,drawing on Seagull’s full computer-basedOnboard Training Library.

STA Online gives shore staff unlimitedaccess to all STA training records and statis-tical reports. The majority of STA function-ality can be accessed within STA Online,including personnel administration, indi-vidual training records, competence train-ing requirements and status reports.

Among Seagull’s planned product

modules for 2010 is a completely new CBTpackage to assist seafarers in their contin-uing battle against piracy.

The company notes that more and moreagencies have added circulars and instruc-tions advising or directing the seafarer.Seagull has monitored these and the newmodule consolidates the latest measures,delivering applicable training in a consis-tent form. Seagull can be found at the AMMITECbooth, number 342.

Ship EquipShip Equip will present its SEVSAT andShip Equip TV for ships systems atPosidonia 2010.

SEVSAT is a broadband IP VSAT solu-tion installed on 770 vessels, offering e-mail, internet and telephony connectivity.

The company's SEVSAT Ku-band serv-ice offers what it calls a patchwork of cov-erage reaching around the world throughmore than 20 integrated satellite spots,while its SEVSAT C-band delivers fullglobal coverage on the world’s oceans.

The company also runs a 24/7 networkoperations centre (NOC) that monitorsand distributes network traffic.

Ship Equip's head office is situated inAalesund, Norway, with operational officesin Houston and Singapore, and sales officesin Oslo, London, Seattle and Reykjavik. Thecompany is owned by the management,local investors and Ferd Venture.Visit Ship Equip at stand number 728.

Sperry MarineExhibiting on the stand of its Greek repre-sentatives, SRH Marine, Sperry Marine willpresent its VisionMaster FT family ofmarine navigation technology at Posidonia.

Sperry Marine, headquartered inVirginia, USA, and with engineering andsupport offices in New Malden, UK, andHamburg, Germany, provides navigationand ship control solutions for the interna-tional marine industry.

The company offers customer serviceand support through offices in 16 coun-tries, sales representatives in 47 countriesand authorized service depots in morethan 250 locations worldwide. SperryMarine is a business unit of NorthropGrumman Corporation.Visit Sperry at the SRH stand, number 598.

StratosAt its Posidonia stand, Stratos will high-light AmosConnect 8, the next generationof its popular AmosConnect solution.

In May, Stratos announced the commer-cial availability of this new version, which

enhances FleetBroadband for vessels at sea.Users now can control their FleetBroadbandsessions and ensure optimal airtime usedirectly from AmosConnect.

The new software features a flexibledesign to improve business efficiency, meet-ing all maritime application requirements.

The AmosConnect 8 portal brings allship-relevant data to one central informa-tion page, with sending of reports andreceipt of weather updates and companynews achievable within the same inter-face. All service settings are remotely con-figurable from a central office, thus reduc-ing implementation and support time.

AmosConnect integrates vessel andshore-based office applications, combin-ing all message types into a single system.The company says that upgrading to thenew version is an easy process for thethousands of vessels that are using thesoftware for their daily communications.Stratos is at stand number 201.

Thomas Gunn NavigationServices

Thomas Gunn Navigation Services, togeth-er with Poly Thomas Gunn, will concen-trate its Posidonia presentations on thetransition from paper to digital navigation.

On display will be the type approved TGNavecdis, with experts from the manufactur-er on hand to give in depth demonstrations.

Thomas Gunn representatives will alsobe able to offer advice on rules and regu-lations, and advise on the plans requiredby shipping companies to be fully pre-pared for ECDIS implementation. Chartcoverage, specific chart carriage as pervessel trading pattern, and managementof the electronic charts are among themajor issues the company has highlightedin this regard.

Thomas Gunn Navigation Services hasalso formed a partnership with John Lilleyand Gillie to provide the Total ECDISSolution, and will launch version 3 of itsVoyager service, which delivers weeklycorrection data by web or e-mail, atPosidonia.

Experts from Meteo consult will addi-tionally be on hand at the stand to demon-strate the SPOS weather service.Thomas Gunn can be found at stand 225.

TransasTransas will showcase its ECDIS equip-ment ahead of IMO's 2012 mandatoryrequirement for a number of vessel types.

The company notes that a lot of vital issuesaccompany this fact, and will offer a range ofservices to aid in the ECDIS transition.

Besides type-approved ECDIS, a vesselshould have official Electronic NavigationCharts (ENCs) with regular updates andcrews that are trained accordingly. Thecrew onboard also has to be certified onthe system and be well prepared for futurevetting inspections.

To assist in this Transas has developed anew product, the Navi-Planner 4000, whichconsists of a set of databases, applicationsand services intended for voyage planningthat can be used both onboard at back ofbridge and ashore as a management tool,accessible via an internet browser.

Transas claims to be the only companyin the market providing the full scope ofsolutions for companies who want to beECDIS mandatory compliant, including

POSIDONIA PREVIEW


Ku- and C-band from Ship Equip – stand 728

News for crews in their native tongue –stand 342

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type-approved ECDIS, official charts sup-ply, digital services, simulation systemsand hands-on training. Visit Transas at Posidonia at stand 132.

Veson NauticalVeson Nautical is a US-based softwaredeveloper for the commercial maritimecommunity.

Veson’s solutions aredeveloped to be used by arange of clients — from own-ers to charterers and fromtankers to dry bulk opera-tors. IMOS (IntegratedMaritime OperationsSystem) and Veslink com-prise Veson Nautical’sEnterprise ResourcePlanning offerings.

IMOS provides an efficientapproach to organising andmanaging a shipping compa-ny, consisting of ten modulescovering various aspects ofshipping operation.

These can be integrated tobuild complete solutions forowners or charterers of drybulk, tanker, LNG, and bargecompanies. The system alsohelps to streamline work-flow and consolidate infor-mation across all depart-ments.

Veson Nautical also offersVeslink, its configurableWeb-based service that cre-ates a network of contacts forexchanging data vital toshipping operations.

Veslink is used to man-age, integrate, and automateship to shore communica-tion, allowing information tobe exchanged between part-ners and customers.Veson Nautical can befound at stand 450/3.

VirtekCommunication

Virtek will present itsCommBox technology, withthe system's latest generationof software, at Posidonia2010.

CommBox is a data com-munication solution used tomanage optimisation, crewwelfare, remote control andsecurity for shipboard con-nectivity.

The main features of thesystem include least costrouting and carrier switch-ing, IP routing, firewalls andVPN, automated file trans-fers and differential synchro-nisation, and e-mail servers,relay servers and clients forPOP3/SMTP/IMAP.

The CommBox can also beused to manage web optimi-sation, caching, and contentand URL filtering, as well asproviding pre-paid roamingcrew accounts for e-mail andweb access.Virtek will offer live

demonstrations and design examples ofhow the CommBox can be implementedwithin a network at stand number 667.

World-LinkCommunications

World-Link Communications, a providerof customisable maritime satellite commu-nications solutions, will present its ShipSat

service at Posidonia, an at-sea communi-cations system for ships that wants to takeadvantage of what the company calls “Ku-band global coverage.”

ShipSat is designed to be meet maritimebroadband requirements in areas such asinternet usage and VPN access to enter-prise networks, as well as real-time VOIPand video conferencing. The solution

includes a Trac Phone V7 mini-VSAT, anFB 150, a ShipSat Gateway, and ShipMail,ShipAV and FastLink applications.

The service is provided at a fixed rateper month, starting at $1,850. Split Billingand Airtime services are also included. To learn more about ShipSat, visitWorld-Link at booth 450/10 at Posidonia,in the USA pavilion in hall 4.


Digital Ship

DS

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RR ecent articles in Digital Ship con-cerning growing orders for ship-borne broadband systems remind

us that this technology is poised to have asignificant impact on the industry.

It can be expected that the ever improv-ing cost/benefit ratio of internet connectionwill lead to its near universal adoption, atleast by those ships currently using stan-dard satellite communications systems.

Smaller vessels, not able to carry abroadband satellite system, will increas-ingly be able to benefit from wireless inter-net facilities in and close to port throughWiMAX stations.

WiMAX is most simply considered as ahigh power Wi-Fi connection, giving lowcost, long range and high speed wirelessinternet coverage. Its range is potentiallymeasured in terms of tens of kilometresfrom the access point, rather than just thetens of metres given by Wi-Fi.

Although WiMAX facilities are notparticularly common at present, manybelieve that this will change in the rela-tively near future.

Of course, web access is available todayin many ports by mobile phone connectionbut extensive use can be expensive, even ifcareful use is made of local SIM cards.

The internet, whether wired or wireless,is rapidly becoming the mainstream com-munications facility covering all activities.

Eventually, web-based services arelikely to replace many existing ‘singlefunction’ operations, such as TV and radiobroadcasts, and possibly even two-wayradio systems. In fact, for mobile phones,the transition is effectively well underway.

It can be expected that the maritimeworld will naturally follow this pathbecause it is mainstream and relativelyfuture proof – and therefore affordable.

In particular, the use of the internet onships provides the means to radicalisemarine navigation. In fact, it has the veryreal potential of becoming the backbone toe-Navigation.

Voyage planningIn principle, ships with broadband internetfacilities can readily benefit from theirapplication in voyage planning basedaround ECDIS use, even if only available inport. The beauty of web-based services isthe intelligence that can be built into them,considerably aiding the planning process.

Ideally, the data downloaded would beentirely specific to the voyage and theship’s characteristics and therefore wouldnot be equivalent to downloading pages ofinformation in book-like form, from whichthe navigator has to select the relevant data.

Also, since only the data needed for thevoyage is downloaded, download costsand time are minimised.

For instance, the waypoints from the‘first-cut’ planned route could be used toautomatically download updates to those

ENCs that the route passes through,resulting in the most up-to-date data beingused for the detailed planning.

The system could keep a continualcheck on the update status of all chartsbeing used in the planning process toensure that any additional charts accessedwere fully up-to-date.

The need for CD-based updates, withtheir significant delivery logistic issues,could be entirely eliminated for users ofsuch a system, although backup issues incase of web unavailability would need tobe carefully considered.

Relevant Temporary and PreliminaryNotices to Mariners, if not part of the ENCupdate, could also be made similarly avail-able, as would Maritime Safety Information– and not in clumsy NAVTEX format.

A comprehensive system would includeall other sources of voyage related informa-tion, such as recommended routes, climateguides, sailing directions, tidal heights, cur-rent streams, and detailed port informa-tion, entirely replacing conventional book-based information sources.

Of course, access to meteorological andice reports, tailored for the specific pur-poses of the voyage, could also form partof a comprehensive package.

The ideal system would allow the easytransfer of relevant information into theECDIS, such as via geographically posi-tioned Mariners’ Notes. Increasing integra-tion of ECDIS with web-based planningservices can be expected into the future.

Computer-based but relatively basicvoyage planning services, such as e-Navigator from the UKHO, are starting tooffer a digital approach to planning.

However, as internet capabilitybecomes common on ships, such servicesare bound to become more sophisticatedand comprehensive and we will soonwonder how safe voyage planning wasachieved without web access.

Voyage monitoring andreporting

If internet connectivity remains availableduring the voyage, any updated or newinformation relevant to the ship’s passagecould create an automatic alert for thebridge team as it was received.

In fact, reliable internet connectivity,even if only available in coastal waters,would provide the architecture for a totalrethink of navigational services and so theinternet could become the essential com-ponent of e-Navigation.

For instance, it could provide the princi-pal route for all digital data and voice com-munications to the shore and other vessels.

As previously mentioned it could pro-vide a considerably enhanced service forMaritime Safety Information, far superiorto NAVTEX.

It could also significantly enhance AIS.The ship would continue to be identified

by its present AIS transmissions but, apartfrom basic real-time navigational data, alldetailed information would be polled viathe internet.

This would immediately resolve theonerous bandwidth restrictions that limitthe usefulness of present-day AIS.

For instance it would allow the automat-ic or semi-automatic exchange of detailedinformation concerning a vessel’s inten-tions, such as planned route, and, in theopposite direction, port or coastal authorityinstructions or recommendations.

All presently envisaged binary mes-sages of AIS could be readily transferredto such a system and be considerablyenhanced. This includes route informa-tion, berthing data and real time hydro-logical and meteorological related data.

In particular, all formal ship-to-shorereporting activities, to any desired com-plexity and to any degree of manual orautomatic intervention, could be included.

It would also allow futuristic conceptsto be introduced, such as allowing portauthorities to command the automaticdownload of a vessel’s radar image inorder to enhance the port’s display or toupload relevant aspects of the port’s situa-tional display to vessels.

All data presently transmitted bycoastal authorities could potentially besupplied through the internet. Into thefuture, this could possibly even includeesoteric items, such as differential GNSS

data for the actual satellites being used bya web-connected positioning receiver.

Of particular importance is the futureproofing that it gives – new or modifiedservices and applications can be simplyimplemented.

Can this become real?For voyage planning purposes, both satel-lite based and local wireless internet serv-ices are already suitable for providingvery effective services, once the applica-tions become available.

For ‘statutory’ coastal navigation serv-ices, reliance on commercial internetaccess would probably not be practical ordesirable, for safety and security reasons.

Perhaps the answer is for coastal author-ities to provide dedicated WiMAX facilities.

Across open sea, WiMAX has a usablerange out to about 50 km, not too differentto marine VHF and AIS base stations.WiMAX stations could therefore be locat-ed at existing coastal authority sites.

Safeguards would need to be providedthat will prevent illicit use by others andto prevent non-navigation related internetactivity on ships. Schemes for controllingthis appear to be quite feasible.

Ship systems connected to the servicewould need high levels of security andvirus protection. Safeguards would needto be built-in to ensure that spoofing ofshore or ship data was not possible.

Clearly, the capacity of each WiMAX sta-tion would have to match the expected traf-fic. Overload would cause significant prob-lems. It would perhaps be prudent to main-tain manual VHF voice links and other‘legacy’ systems for emergency backup use.

Importantly, the basic functionality ofship and shore radar and AIS would remainindependent of internet connectivity.

By maintaining legacy systems into theforeseeable future it would allow a phasedintroduction of e-Navigation over anextended period, eventually covering allvessels, including fishing and leisure craft.

Once universal adoption is achievedthe legacy system could be modified toprovide a tailored backup service that maynot be a replica of the existing services.

Certain restrictions on ship movementswould perhaps come into force in the caseof reversion to the restricted capability ofthe backup service.

An important issue would be the needto ensure that time critical data is auto-matically given priority to other databeing sent across the network, making it aspecial type of network operation ratherthan just a standard application.

As the installation of broadband satellite communications technologies continues to grow in the maritime industry, the potential impact of these systems on the future of navigation could be enormous. Dr Andy Norrislooks at some of the ways shipboard connectivity will affect the next generation of vessel navigation

Broadband in navigation

Broadband should allow vessels toautomatically download ENC updates

for their planned routes

DS

Dr Andy �orris has been well-known in the maritime navigation industry for anumber of years. He has spent much of his time managing high-tech navigationcompanies but now he is working on broader issues within the navigationalworld, providing both technical and business consultancy to the industry, gov-ernmental bodies and maritime organizations. Email: [email protected]

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A NEW PHASE OF MARITIME CONNECTIVITY.

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p32-56:p26-32.qxd 21/05/2010 11:34 Page 24

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Rickmers signs 102 vessel satcom deal - Digital Ship

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