Sea Traffic Management – Beneficial for all Maritime Stakeholders

Sea Traffic Management is the idea of sharing information and collaborating to optimise the maritime transport chain while increasing safety and sustainability. The digital information on-board and on shore is abundant; however, the interconnection today is point-to-point and proprietary and stops the industry becoming more efficient. We will discuss how Sea Traffic Management will help the industry achieve improved predictability by introducing standards for key information and supplying an infrastructure for information exchange. This enables all actors involved in the transport to plan better and utilise their resources more efficiently. Shorter routes, just-in-time arrivals, shorter port calls are factors that will strengthen the competitiveness of the maritime sector. Improved situational awareness on the bridge and knowledge of planned routes will help optimised planning as well as reducing the number of incidents and accidents. The standard route exchange format submitted by the EU-financed MONALISA 2.0 project partners in 2014 is included in the current edition of the IEC standard, which was launched in August 2015. Solutions using that standard will start realising the benefits already next year. We will describe an infrastructure, which could work in a centralised manner but also has the flexibility to be organised in a more federative manner, similar to how the maritime world works in many aspects. Some key components are: a unique identifier for each voyage; that the information publisher controls who can access the data; that updated information should be made available in real-time; and that subscription to updated data will be the main trigger for many systems and processes. We will also describe the outcomes of the test beds in the MONALISA 2.0 project – The Sound: how shore and vessel can interact better in order improve safety in dense traffic areas; Port of Gothenburg and Port of Valencia – how collaborative decision making can improve operations for all involved actors; European Maritime Simulator Network – how new solutions can be tested in complex traffic situations and areas with real people on a large number of bridges, without risk. How large of an impact will all this have on the maritime transport industry? Based on a study from Linköping University, we believe that the number €1 billion/year in Europe due to shorter routes is only the tip of the benefit iceberg. In the study ship operators and society split the benefit 50/50. Ship operators save on fuel and other cost, society saves on reduced emissions, and other actors associated to maritime operations benefit from a higher degree of infrastructural use. We will also present results from other business cases developed during 2015, in which the benefits of Sea Traffic Management are elaborated on main stakeholders.