International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 1

Number 4

December 2007

361

Today’s Maritime Navigation and Its Changes

J. Urbanski, W. Morgas & Z. Kopacz

Polish Naval Academy of Gdynia, Poland

ABSTRACT: In this paper, there are presented the main reasons and results of changes in maritime

navigation. The following issues are discussed: substance of maritime navigation; the main reasons of changes

in maritime navigation; integration of the ship’s navigation process and its results; the growing necessity of

supervising all the human activities performed at sea; steady increase of the amount and differentiation of the

human activities at sea and; the main results from the changes in maritime navigation. This paper should be

considered as further précising and developing the authors’ considerations and conclusions presented in the

earlier papers.

1 SUBSTANCE OF MARITIME NAVIGATION

The main meaning of the term “maritime

navigation” is the following: “maritime navigation is

the process of safe and efficient conduct the ship at

sea”. The term “ship at sea” should be understood

as” surface, hovering, and underwater; manned and

unmanned; autonomous and remote-controlled ship,

vessel, vehicle, craft, etc.” The ship’s navigation

process consist of the series of navigational works,

deeds, procedures, etc. being performed in the

sequence, recurrently and accordingly to the

navigational dangers and threats occurring in the

ship’s surrounding, automatically or personally from

the bridge of own ship, or from the remote place.

The maritime navigation is also the profession and

kind of applied maritime science.

The process of maritime navigation and its

component subprocesses have been presented in

the earlier authors papers [Kopacz Z., Morgaś W.,

Urbański J., 2003].

2 THE MAIN REASONS OF THE CHANGES IN

MARITIME NAVIGATION

There are a lot of reasons of changes in maritime

navigation. The most important of them can be ex-

pressed as follows:

1 fast growing amount and kinds of human

activities at sea, especially so called the non-

navigational activities performed in underwater

environment and even in shallow waters;

2 fast technological and scientific progress

expressing itself mainly in creation and wide

applying the following:

− very accurate and reliable global positioning

systems,

− very efficient and reliable telecommunication

equipment and systems,

− maritime Geographic Information Systems

(GIS) and voyage management systems (VMS),

− remote sensing equipment and systems, but

especially, hydroacoustic ones, and different

kinds of surveillance technologies,

− technologies offered by the control and remote

control engineering, and others;

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3 steady emerging of the new kinds of dangers and

threats, but especially:

− global threat of terrorist attacks,

− growing danger of environmental pollution,

− harmful and unlawful exploitation of sea

resources, etc.;

4 steady desire and demand of enhancement of the

operational and economical efficiency of all kinds

of human activities performed at sea.

3 INTEGRATION OF THE SHIP’S

NAVIGATION PROCESS AND ITS RESULTS

Integration is the process of making the whole

(system, process, etc.) more perfect and efficient by

adding or bringing together the component parts

(elements, subprocesses, etc.). The integration of the

ship’s navigation process consists in making this

process more efficient operationally and economi-

cally by merging and incorporating into the ship’s

navigation process the activities that before were not

considered as navigational ones, i.e. activities that

belonged before to the other ship’s processes. In

Figure 1, there is shown the substance of integration

of the ship’s navigation process into ship’s operation

control process [Kopacz Z., Morgaś W. and Urbań-

ski J., 2004].

Fig. 1. The extent of ship’s navigation/operation processes for

three levels of ship’s integration

The final objective of integration of ship’s navi-

gation process is transforming it into the ship’s op-

eration control process and complete elimination of

all other ship’s processes constituting the ship’s op-

eration process.

4 THE GROWING NECESSITY OF

SUPERVISING ALL HUMAN ACTIVITIES AT

SEA

Fast growing necessity of supervising more and

more human activities at sea results mainly from the

following reasons:

1 growing necessity of monitoring and assisting the

ships traffic in congested and confined areas,

2 necessity to diminish or even eliminate the threat

of huge environmental pollution by tankers and

other ships transporting the dangerous goods

(crude oil, liquefied gases, etc.),

3 necessity of prevention of all terrorist activities

and attacks on the whole maritime infrastructure

and on all the maritime industries.

Today’s scientific and technological progress

renders all the possibilities to create and operate very

reliable and effective systems supervising all kinds

of human activities at sea. The supervising the

human activities at sea is and will be realized by the

following system:

1 ships traffic monitoring and assisting systems;

these are: Ships Reporting Systems (SRS), Vessel

Traffic Systems (VTS); Automatic Information

Systems (AIS), and others,

2 European Union’s Vessel Traffic, Monitoring and

Information System (demanded by the Directive

of the European Parliament and of the Council of

2002),

3 Long Range Identification and Tracking System

(LRIT), and others.

The process of permanent, and accelerated in-

crease of supervising all the human activities at sea

results in growing dependence of ship’s navigation

process upon the more and more coastal supervising

systems.

5 INCREASE AND DIFFERENTIATION OF

HUMAN ACTIVITIES AT SEA

In the not distant past all human activities at sea

could have been considered as navigational activi-

ties, called also as the standard activities. The main

objective of these activities is safe and efficient

transport of goods and people at sea. However now,

the non-navigational activities at sea are prevailing.

The share of this part of activities is steadily in-

creased, especially, the underwater activities. The

not-navigational, i.e. special activities are not related

to the sea-transport industry. These activities com-

prise the sea exploration, sea exploitation, naval

warfare and different kinds of protection activities,

as well as other not transporting activities.

363

The precondition of realization of any kind of

human activity at sea is ensuring the navigational

safety. This kind of safety, i.e. state of being safe

from the collisions, groundings as well as damages

and losses resulting from the very unfavorable

weather conditions, and terrorist activities, is being

achieved by:

1 creating, maintaining and operating the Ship’s

Navigation Safety System. This system must

provide all users of sea with the standard

navigational information, i.e. information which

meet the requirements imposed by the International

Convention for “Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS 74)

and other relevant international requirements

[Kopacz Z., Morgaś W. and Urbański J., 2001 and

2002],

2 performing the ship’s navigation process in

conformity with the requirements established by

the International Convention on Standards of

Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for

Seafarers (STCW 78/95) called the standard

ship’s navigation process.

The realization of special, i.e. non-navigational

kinds of human activities, at sea, besides ensuring

the navigational safety, demands also, additionally,

ensuring the possibilities of realization of these ac-

tivities as well as sufficient affectivity of the realiza-

tion process. For the realization of the above re-

quirements there is needed:

1 additional special navigational information,

proper for each kind of realized activities,

2 adapting the standard ships’ navigation process to

realization of special, i.e. non-navigational ship’s

tasks.

The special navigational information is being

achieved from the dedicated special information

sources (Hydrographic Offices, etc.) and from the

own, i.e. organic sources (Additional Military Layers

for ECDIS-N systems, specialized hydroacoustic

sensors, etc.).

Adaptation of the standard ship’s navigation

process to realization of special human activities at

sea, i.e. to special ship’s tasks, comprises, mainly,

planning the necessary ship’s handlings and maneu-

verings while realization of special ship’s tasks, as

well as ways of their realization (e.g. maneuverings

and handlings while mine laying, mine fighting, etc).

In Figure 2, there is shown the ship’s navigation

process while realization of special activities at sea.

Fig. 2. Ship’s navigation process adapted to realization of

special ship’s tasks

The above considerations and statesment allow to

conclude the following:

1 ship’s navigation process of majority of ships,

vehicles and craft, i.e. of ships realizing the

special, i.e. non-navigational activities, must

ensure not only the safe and efficient conduct

them at sea but also the possibility and high

efficiency of realization of non-navigational ships

tasks,

2 the above allow to conclude that there have come

into being two kinds of ship’s navigation process,

i.e. the standard ship’s navigation process

performed by ships realizing the standard, i.e.

navigational activities (activities related to

transport at sea), and special ship’s navigation

process that contains also in itself the standard

ship’s navigation process, and that is performed

by the ships realizing the non-navigational

activities (tasks) at sea,

3 maritime navigation, but more precisely, more

and more navigational procedures are becoming

the integral part of special human activities

performed at sea.

6 MAIN RESULTS OF CHANGES IN

MARITIME NAVIGATION

The above considerations allow to draw the fol-

lowing conclusions:

1 the ship’s navigation process is being transformed

stepwise into the ship’s operation process,

2 the fast growing amount and kinds of special, i.e.

non-navigational, human activities at sea resulted

in coming into being the special ship’s navigation

process. This process must not only realize the

tasks of standard ship’s navigation process, i.e.

ensuring the safe and efficient conduct the ships

at sea, but special ship’s navigation process must

364

also ensure the possibility of realization of ships

special tasks as well as sufficient efficiency of

their realization,

3 the procedures of maritime navigation in greater

and greater degree are becoming the integral part

of all non-navigational human activities

performed at sea,

4 the growing necessity of supervising all the

human activities realized at sea results in growing

dependency of the ship’s navigation process upon

more and more coastal supervising and navigation

assistance systems,

5 despite the huge scientific and technological

progress implemented into maritime navigation,

the ship’s navigation process did not become

neither simpler nor easier. The reasons are the

following:

− the amount of dangers and threats at sea do not

decrease. It is contrary. The amount and kinds

of dangers and threats at sea including the

terrorist threats, are steadily increasing,

− the ship’s navigation process in more and more

degree is being depended upon coastal

supervising and navigation assistance systems

whose amount steadily increases,

6 integration of ship’s navigation process results in

situation that ship’s navigation process in greater

and greater degree includes also the ship’s

operation activities that before belonged to the

other ship’s processes, e.g. to the ship’s platform

control process and others (cf. Figure 1.),

7 because the navigational safety is not only the main

component of the maritime safety and security

being necessary for realization of all human

activities at sea, but it is also the precondition of

realization of each kind of these activities,

maritime navigation is becoming the science that

in greater and greater degree integrates all the

other maritime sciences in effort to ensure the

sufficient level of maritime safety and security for

realization of human activities at sea,

8 because the satellite positioning system constitute

the very important element of navigational

infrastructure not only of maritime navigation but

also of all the other kinds of navigation, i.e. air,

land and space navigation, and because of wide

applying the informatics’ achievement in all kinds

of navigation, e.g. geographic information systems

(GIS), voyage management systems (VMS) and

other similar systems, the differences between the

different kinds of navigation are steadily

disappearing. However, it seems that the

differences between different kinds of navigation,

resulted from the different kinds of geographical

environment and, therefore, from different

navigational and operational features of vessels,

vehicles and craft, as well as different kinds of

human activities performed in these environments,

will not disappear in the foreseeable future.

7 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, the most important reasons and results

of changes in maritime navigation have been

presented and discussed. The authors’ belief is that

their attempt to show these reasons and results may

be interested and useful mainly for these who are in-

terested how the maritime navigation may develop

and change in the nearest future. This paper consti-

tutes also an attempt to identify and specify the most

important reasons and results of today’s changes in

maritime navigation.

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