International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 3

Number 2

June 2009

213

1 INTRODUCTION

In the last few years, advances in digital communi-

cation, ocean climate modelling and earth observa-

tion systems have began to have an increasing im-

pact across the whole maritime community bridging

waterborne and coastal activities.

1.1 Environment and Security

In the waterborne sector the demands for improved

navigation safety and security have introduced new

ship monitoring technologies such as AIS and LRIT

and stimulated demand for increased coverage and

accuracy of satellite observations. Concern about

pollution impact and consequence of oil spills, bal-

last waters and ship emissions have introduced poli-

cy driven information requirements associated with

a raft of new compliance legislation arising from;

MARPOL (Annexes I, VI), Ballast Waters Man-

agement Convention 2004, UK Marine Bill (UK

Marine Bill 2008) and the new Integrated Maritime

Policy for the European Union (EU 2007) which co-

vers coastal protection and maritime transportation.

In the context of climate change there is a growing

need to have access to accurate weather and sea state

(tides, currents, waves) forecasts as input to data-

driven services such as oil spill monitoring, ballast

waters dispersion and global ship routing. These

strategic baseline data have been identified as “ma-

rine core services” under the European FP7 devel-

opment programme GMES (Global Monitoring of

Environment and Security) which has been ongoing

since 2000.

1.2 Marine Stewardship

In response to the need for increasing levels of in-

formation addressing state and sustainability of the

marine environment to support local, regional and

national policy the concept of Marine Stewardship

has in recent years started to take on an important

new meaning and dimension (Graff 2006). Although

Marine Stewardship has a country by country inter-

pretation there is common emphasis on importance

of the spatial data domain and a growing recognition

that governance, interoperability and information

services are key underpinning features. At the Euro-

pean scale the development of a new digitally based

geospatial information philosophy is being support-

ed under the European Commission INSPIRE (In-

frastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Di-

rective which in turn is part of a global effort to

build commonality across national “Spatial Data In-

frastructures” or SDI’s (Labonte et al 1998, ESDP

1999). The GMES programme addresses the provi-

e-Maritime: An Enabling Framework for

Knowledge Transfer and Innovative

Information Services Development Across the

Waterborne Transport Sector

J. Graff

BMT Group Ltd., Teddington, England, UK

ABSTRACT: The economic and social impact of the waterborne sectors in Europe cannot be overstated, em-

ploying directly more than 3 million people and generating a turnover of about €250 billion representing more

than 1% of the EU’s GDP. In order to maintain its leadership and competitiveness, Europe must take ad-

vantage of new market opportunities and address these challenges by means of focused research, development

and innovation. In recent years the impact of digital technology and relevance of geospatial information has

been increasingly felt across the whole maritime community bridging waterborne and coastal activities. The

challenge for the maritime and marine science communities is to accelerate the transformation of the maritime

sector into one that is able to exploit market-led opportunities and create high value added outputs that fully

embraces technological and scientific advances. e-Maritime offers itself as the enabling framework.

214

sion of end user information services through inte-

gration of measurement, modelling and prediction

within a geospatial systems environment. Many of

these emerging services are marine policy driven

providing information to support coastal zone gov-

ernance relating to fisheries, quality of waters, ex-

traction of gravels, protection of marine species and

flood protection. In view of the emerging require-

ment to extend land environment mapping into

coastal waters (Land-Marine Workshop 2007) and

provide access to these data, efforts to define and

develop the protocol and standards for a marine spe-

cific SDI are underway (Ng’ang‘a 2004, Sutherland

2005, Sutherland & Nicholas 2006). The Interna-

tional Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) has

acknowledged the potential importance of a marine

spatial data infrastructure and a special IHO work-

shop on Marine SDI was convened during the Geo-

matica 2007, to discuss related issues. The first of

five resolutions agreed at the IHO Workshop states;

“IHB to communicate with IOC to cooperate on

the development of the spatial data standard S-100,

with a view to facilitate marine/hydrographic data

exchange”.

This is an important statement that recognizes the

need for knowledge exchange and collaboration be-

tween the maritime technology and marine science

communities to address emerging information needs

increasingly relevant to development and welfare of

the waterborne industry. The statement reflects ear-

lier calls for such cross sector dialogue made by the

author (Graff 2006, 2007).

This has led to formation of a new IHO Working

Group on Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure

(MSDIWG) which together with the strategic Work-

ing Group on Transfer Standard Maintenance and

Applications Development (TSMAD - responsible

for S-100 development) will provide an important

contribution to evolution of the IMO e-Navigation

vision.

1.3 Marine Transportation

Motorways of the Sea (DGTREN 2005) is a

growing concept that aims at introducing new inter-

modal maritime-based logistics chains which will

bring about a structural change in our transport or-

ganisation that will be more sustainable and com-

mercially more efficient. At European scale there are

four proposed marine motorway systems linking re-

gional states which are illustrated in Figure 1 and at

global scale the Marine Electronic Highway pilot

project (Sekimizu et al 2001, Gillespie 2005) in the

Malacca Strait being progressed by IMO represents

another important first step in prototyping some of

these ideas.

In addition to conventional navigation aids gov-

erning weather and bathymetric charts the evolution

of marine motorways will demand increasingly so-

phisticated products and services to monitor traffic,

mitigate accidents and pollution impact and to opti-

mise and improve commercial efficiency of routing

and port turn-around. For example, AIS and LRIT

are already being adopted as key data carriers to im-

prove monitoring and safety of regional and global

vessel traffic and improvements in marine broad-

band are leading to new types of remote monitoring

and information exchange. A service offering that is

receiving much attention from several developers is

the concept of ship performance monitoring which

integrates onboard vessel behavior parameters with

prevailing sea state and weather to compute continu-

ous updates of optimal routing advice delivered re-

motely to the bridge. The IMO e-navigation strategy

offers a vision for a web services infrastructure that

lends itself to delivery of a wide range of such new

added-value marine information services in addition

to mandatory ECDIS information.

Figure 1. The four proposed European Motorways of the Sea

interconnecting regional sea States in Europe.

These initiatives also highlight a particularly im-

portant feature namely; the need for convergence be-

tween maritime technology and marine science in

order to realise the degree of knowledge integration

needed to provide the types of sophisticated mari-

time information services required today.

215

2 E-NAVIGATION

The IMO e-Navigation Strategy was initiated in

2005 with intent on embracing new digital technolo-

gies to provide the framework for new digital ser-

vices adoption across the maritime transport com-

munity to support navigation. IALA (International

Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and

Lighthouse Authorities) was charged by IMO with

developing the e-Navigation vision and standards

(IALA 2007). A definition for e-Navigation was

agreed at the IALA e-Navigation Committee meet-

ing (e-NAV2) in Southampton in March 2007; It

reads:

“E-Navigation is the harmonised collection, integra-

tion, exchange and presentation of maritime infor-

mation onboard and ashore by electronic means to

enhance berth to berth navigation and related ser-

vices, for safety and security at sea and protection of

the marine environment”

e-Navigation is underpinned by 7 points that have

to be considered in an integrated fashion.

1 Electronic charts and weather information

2 Electronic positioning signals

3 Electronic information on vessel route, course,

manoeuvring etc.

4 Transmission of positional and navigational in-

formation

5 Display of information

6 Information reporting, prioritisation and alert ca-

pability

7 Transmission of distress alerts and maritime safe-

ty information

In order to have the functionality demanded for

delivery and display of mandatory navigation data,

e-Navigation has to be supported by an ECDIS.

2.1 ECDIS

A key feature in progressing e-Navigation lies in

universal adoption of Electronic Nautical Charts

(ENC) and the availability of a common approach to

the use and display of ENCs and related navigation

aid data onboard vessels namely, the Electronic

Chart Data Information System or ECDIS. In July

2008 draft regulations were presented by IMO to

make the carriage of ECDIS a mandatory require-

ment under SOLAS Chapter V Safety of Navigation.

It is anticipated that this will be adopted and thus

trigger the universality of ENC adoption and usage.

The role of ECDIS is especially important in

view that a new version (S-100) for the digital code

structure of ENC’s (commonly known as S-57) has

been developed (Alexander et al 2008) and is cur-

rently being released under test with adoption envis-

aged in the next few years. The new code is “open

standards compliant” which enables the handling of

many other data types, for example, S-100 will sup-

port gridded and time series (x, y, z, t) data in sup-

port of dynamic ECDIS, marine GIS and web based

services. This paves the way for a new generation of

ECDIS systems that can exchange data with coastal

GIS databases and operational forecasting centres

and provide a gateway for other decision-support in-

formation services.

However, it also raises questions regarding scope

and definition of ECDIS and what influence IHO

might have on commercial services development

through Working Groups TSMAD and MDSIWG.

3 E-MARITIME

Although conceived to improve the safety and secu-

rity, e-Navigation also has a potential to increase ef-

ficiency and performance of ship operations, which

is the main consideration for ship-owners, operators

and their service providers e.g., minimise fuel con-

sumption and mitigate emissions.

In 2006 the EC started considering e-Navigation

in parallel with IALA and tasked the FP6 MarNIS

(Maritime Navigation Information Services) project

with developing an e-Navigation vision. The

MarNIS e-Navigation Task Force meeting (Oslo,

18.09.2006) revised the concept of e-Navigation to

embrace the following criteria:

− to minimise navigational errors, incidents and ac-

cidents;

− to protect people, the marine environment and re-

sources;

− to improve security;

− to reduce costs for shipping and coastal states;

and

− to deliver benefits for the commercial shipping

industry

The last two points extend e-Navigation into a

system termed e-Maritime. This is important and

provides a clear distinction between the two namely.

e-Navigation (protocol oriented) is to ensure pro-

vision of navigational data and information, also

from / to Aids to Navigation etc., in a standard-

ised/harmonised way to facilitate common interpre-

tation of said navigational data and information.

e-Maritime (system oriented) is the promotion of

the use of all maritime data and information, and the

distribution thereof, to facilitate maritime transport

and provide value added services to improve the

profitability of shipping.

The aim of e-Maritime is to deliver benefits to the

public, transport consumers, public authorities and

the maritime community, by means of ICT and to

offer a framework for commercial services.

216

A schematic of the e-Transport overview showing

both e-Navigation and e-Maritime components is

presented as Figure 2 adapted from work by one of

e-Navigation’s pioneers Dan Pillich (Pillich 2007).

Figure 2. e-Maritime and e-Navigation shown in the broader

context of e-Transport information services provision.

The diagram highlights the role and the compli-

mentarity of e-Maritime as an important overarching

framework that brings together a diversity of tech-

nologies to enable Motorways of the Seas, namely

waterborne transport, with the benefit of latest ad-

vances in ICT and marine science knowledge.

However, as has already been noted under 2.1

above, it is not yet clear what the IMO vision

framework for e-Navigation will embrace and where

conflicts with commercially driven e-Maritime ser-

vices will arise.

4 INTEGRATION AND INNOVATION

The EurOcean 2007 conference produced the “Ab-

erdeen Declaration”, calling for an integrated Euro-

pean Marine and Maritime Science, Research, Tech-

nology and Innovation Strategy which should

enable:

− foresight activities to identify new and emerging

scientific challenges and opportunities;

− cross-sectoral, multinational and interdisciplinary

research partnerships;

− co-operation between research, industry and other

stakeholders to enhance knowledge and technolo-

gy transfer and innovation;

− development of scientific and technology capaci-

ty to strengthen the knowledge economy;

− shared use, planning and investment of critical in-

frastructure on a Europe-wide basis.

This stirred considerable interest and support at

European level and a Post Aberdeen Task Force was

established made up of representatives from Marine

Science and Maritime Industry interest groups in-

cluding ICES, ESF Marine Board, ETP Waterborne

and EuroGOOS. This was deemed relevant as a ve-

hicle for providing a representative response from

the European marine and maritime communities to

the EC actions calling for initiatives to demonstrate

science and technology crossover and innovation.

From a personal perspective, I would argue that

the representation on the Task Force is far too heavi-

ly marine science research biased with the WA-

TERBORNE consortia representing industry, having

a shipbuilding focus. Consequently, there is a gap in

the key new crossover area that is framed in e-

Science (Hey & Trefethen 2003, Env e-Science

2008) and ICT technology applications, namely e-

Maritime, that are enabling a dramatically new data-

driven approach to marine science and technology.

Curiously, there is little or no recognition in the

current EC discourse on European maritime strategy

of the emergence of e-Maritime, or indeed e-

Science, as an important enabler of new information

services and driver for innovation and integration

across marine science and maritime technology re-

search outputs. Why?

Perhaps the answer lies in some of the prophetic

key recommendations identified more than a decade

ago in the seminal UK Marine Foresight Panel study

1994-97 report (UK Marine Foresight 1997) chaired

under the late David Goodrich namely;

3.3 High priority areas for wealth generation

− Information Technology: For acquisition and

processing of increasingly large volumes of data,

the development of intelligent information sys-

tems and GIS-based data management systems is

needed, linking satellite remote sensing, GPS

navigation, monitoring networks (data buoys,

commercial vessels) and hazard databases. Also

required is development of a marine information

service backed by data acquisition.

3.4 Actions for implementation

− The opportunities to apply Digital Information

Technology to the marine environment are many

and varied. Industry should lead this initiative in

consultation with academia and government. The

Panel recommend the setting up of a user led in-

terest group and a LINK programme for the ap-

plication of Digital Information Technology to

the marine environment.”

5 CONCLUSION

It is eminently clear that digital information technol-

ogy is driving a whole new agenda for change in the

waterborne sector and we are at the onset of seeing a

new industry emerge designing and delivering inno-

vative marine information products and services.

217

This offers challenge and opportunity but de-

mands integration and innovation across marine sci-

ence and marine technology sectors and uptake of

new enabling technologies such as e-Science. The

new enabling framework for marine informatics is

proposed as e-Maritime.

Awareness of the underpinning technologies de-

fining e-Science and e-Maritime and understanding

their innovative integration potential seems to be

lacking across marine and maritime communities.

This has to be remedied urgently if Europe is to be-

come a player in the emerging global information

services market. Europe has the potential to lead.

Finally, I would reiterate, now ten years on, a

single recommendation adapted from the 1997 UK

Marine Foresight Panel report namely;

− The opportunities to apply Digital Information

Technology to the marine environment are many

and varied. Industry should lead this initiative in

consultation with academia and government. I

recommend the setting up of a user led interest

group for the application of Digital Information

Technology to the marine environment under the

aegis of e-Maritime.

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