Sea Traffic Management Validation Project (STM Validation Project)

Research Project, 2015 – 2018

Sea Traffic Management – The next step for a safer, more efficient and environmentally friendly maritime sector
A world where the control of information still lies with the information owner and the maritime distributed way of working still remains. A maritime world where the crew focuses on safe navigation instead of reporting, where port calls become even more efficient and just-in-time, making maritime shipping the main transport option for even more goods. We have seen the development of new services in many different industries, and the maritime sector can be revolutionised in ways that we cannot even imagine.Sea Traffic Management will overcome many of the challenges of communication and information sharing between stakeholders in the maritime transport industry. It will create significant added value for the maritime transport chain, in particular for ship owners and cargo owners.

By providing vessels with the ability to see each other’s planned routes, navigators get a more complete picture of how surrounding vessels will influence their onward voyage. Using this data, other services are able to produce valuable information and offer advice to vessels on their routes, such as recommendations to avoid congestion in areas with high traffic, avoidance of environmentally sensitive areas, and maritime safety information. The information exchange between vessel and port actors will improve planning and performance regarding arrivals, departures and turnaround times.

The MONALISA 2.0 project with a consortium of 39 partners and a budget of 24 million euro, has during 2013-2015 defined STM, assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the current maritime ship- and transport systems, operations and interactions, and defined a target concept and key performance indicators for four STM strategic enablers:

1. Voyage Management services will provide support to individual ships in both the planning process and during a voyage, including route planning, route exchange, and route optimisation services.
2. Flow Management services will support both onshore organisations and ships in optimising overall traffic flow through areas of dense traffic and areas with particular navigational challenges.
3. Port Collaborative Decision Making (Port CDM) services will increase the efficiency of port calls for all stakeholders through improved information sharing, situational awareness, optimised processes, and collaborative decision making during port calls.
4. SeaSWIM (System Wide Information Management) will facilitate data sharing using a common information environment and structure (e.g. the Maritime Cloud). This ensures interoperability of STM and other services.

A common technical protocol for route exchange has been developed and was approved as an international standard in August 2015. This is a huge achievement and a prerequisite for further development and deployment of Sea Traffic Management.