Friday, February 1, 2008

Finland to develop new VTS

The Finnish Maritime Administration is to launch a research and development project to create a new type of traffic management support system for vessel traffic service (VTS) centres, which also makes more use of chart data.
The scheme has been initiated in response to forecasts which show that maritime traffic, especially oil transport, will increase significantly in the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland in the foreseeable future. This also calls for more work on ENCs, particularly depth data.
The intelligent decision support system (IDiSS) project runs until 2010 and aims to create functionalities which will compare depth information in electronic navigational charts (ENCs), automatic identification system (AIS) data for vessels sailing in the VTS area, and directional vectors.
If a directional vector shows that a vessel is heading for waters shallower than it can handle according to its AIS data, the system will issue an alarm to the VTS operator so that they can intervene.
Opportunities for utilising various ENC-based maritime information overlays (MIOs) are also being explored, which could include data on ice, weather and environmentally sensitive areas.

ref: www.thedigitalship.com


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