IT and communications for the deep sea commercial shipping sector
eNavigation - where to now?
The use of electronic aids to navigation is generally accepted as a positive influence on the industry, providing new tools that can offer better situational awareness and improve safety if used correctly.
However, despite advances in the field in recent years, too often we hear stories of collisions and groundings involving vessels that, despite having hi-tech systems, were unable to avoid an accident. Where do the problems lie - in training, lack of standardisation, confused regulation? Tell us how you think maritime eNavigation can be improved.
However, despite advances in the field in recent years, too often we hear stories of collisions and groundings involving vessels that, despite having hi-tech systems, were unable to avoid an accident. Where do the problems lie - in training, lack of standardisation, confused regulation? Tell us how you think maritime eNavigation can be improved.
Views: 62
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jorgen Strandberg on -
We first have to battle the basic causes, fatigue and lack of knowledge/training.
Fatigue appear to be created from true or perceived commersial pressure, together with poor leadership from the management in way of disseminating primary goals fo the organsiation.
Lack of knowledge and training are in my experience based on poor academic levels in the maritime academies combined with the poor retention rates of maritime officers.
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Permalink Reply by Jasper Joosse on -
What about officer workload and information overload of watchkeeping officers? I think situational awareness (sensors) and improved interfaces (how to present information), together with training and procedures should make the difference.
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Permalink Reply by Jorgen Strandberg on
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Hi Jasper!
I agree totally with your point, for most normal and motivated crew. ..
The problem as I see it is that there are still "untrainable" officers and Masters out there. We have all came across "the eternal second mates" that lacks basic knowledge and the motivation to take in new training provided. Same goes for the share of Master that manage by fear and consider themself to be above taking in new ideas training and goals from the management.
With present times crewing problems we might never be able to drain these unsuitables from our system (You fire them from your company and the next week they are on a dry cargo ship crossing you bow...) , and hence in my point of view, we will have the grounding and collision in spite of new technology.
For the big pool of motivated and well trained crew on the other hand, the same technology will impore their ability to maintain overview and avoid collision/grounding hazards. But it is the sum of the two groups above that will tarnish the safety records of shipping, creating questions such as this starting thread.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Couttie on -
The answer is "Yes". Pilots do complain about not being able to understand the display, which can vary between the ships they board, so lack of standardisation is certainly an issue but a far bigger factor is poor seamanship, ie, relying on a single source of navigational data, forgetting to utilise the mark 1 eyeball, and not using the resources available to ensure safe navigation.
Bob Couttie
Maritime Accident Casebook
www.maritimeaccident.org
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Permalink Reply by Geoff McCormick on -
I think that the product suppliers should be able to create the hardware and software that is more focused on the users. For me, the most telling response is...
'Pilots do complain about not being able to understand the display'.
while training will reduce misunderstandings, surely a more efficient and effective route to reducing this misunderstanding would be to design better screens and interfaces.
You can guess that i work in the design industry, and i would say that !!!
But apply this thinking to any other industry and you will see the most effective and successful products are the ones that provide an easier to use interface... in consumer markets this is seen as 'cool' - I-pod. While in professional markets, it can be life and death.
What amazes me is that the big money is spent on cool and not life and death.
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Permalink Reply by Jorgen Strandberg on
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Geoff - I agree. At the office and with Nav equipment retailer I always compare with a TomTom car navigation unit. This industry have sucessfully made intuitive functions, modes and displays.
Bob - Several of the accidents and incidents in our company have been from to little or improper use of means available, including over-use of the "Mark 1 eye ball".
In my company we push hard for "all avalilable means" but we are also pushing for situational awareness, and sometimes visual observations as the main methods for this is not the most effective metods.
So we try to make the ECDIS a situational awareness tool by always connecting ARPA targets and AIS targets. Then we get all big targets in one screen, together with own ships position, course, speed, drift and searoom. The other benefit is the secondary means of position fixing, where our watchkeepers plot on the ARPA small stationary object that may also bee seen on the e-chart, such as lighthouses, small island, dolphins etc. These targets will then be seen on the ECDIS screen, hopefully overlaying the corresponding chart object. This way the GPS position is checked with an alternate means, and this check is also recorded in the S-VDR.
This way most of the situational awareness in way of traffic and position fixing is in the ECDIS, and now the officers have ample time to challenge this (undetected targets, error in position) by visual and other means.
A good example of where the above would have been beneficial is the collision on River Mersey the 3 February 2007, where the high speed ferry Sea Express 1 and the general cargo vessel Alaska Rainbow collided the in thick fog. MAIB finding include cluttered radar displays due to ARPA on speed-through the water in a current with river, but makes no mention of AIS! The picture below is of an ECDIS with an AIS overlay. The same help could also be from overlaying the AIS on the radar. Photo Nicklas Liljegren
We need well educated and rested officers, guided by co-piloting Masters that focuses on maintaining overall situational awareness, and we need equipment, rules and procedures that focus on EFFECTIVE navigation, using primary and secondary means.
It also appear that we need pilots that have gone through an approved ECDIS training course so they at least are able to interpret the S-57 standard ENC charts approved for paperless navigation. As far as I know these charts cannot be displayed in more that a limited number of ways
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Permalink Reply by Geoff McCormick on
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Jorgen
While i would not wish to qualify myself as an expert in maritime navigation, i have experienced it at first hand many times to know that over reliance on software is never a good strategy !
As always it is the individual who needs to find his / her balance between advanced IT and training / experience / intuition...
However, the software needs to perform in what I would call extreme environments & circumstances.. By extreme i mean that its use and function are critical to the performance of the vessel and therefore the cargo and lives on board, and on that basis I find what is on offer to be 'sub-optimal'.
Technology alone is never the full answer, but if applied correctly can make a huge difference to efficiency, effectiveness and (to a software vendor) success.
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Permalink Reply by Jasper Joosse on
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Sensors, signal processing, interface and watchkeeping officer are all part of the chain to enable safe navigation. Unfortunately the chain is as strong as the weakest link.
On the sensors, an interesting article appeared in Piet Sinke's "Newsclippings":
"SMA warning on “invisible” AIS vessels
During the end of last week, a Swedish pilot boat noticed that position data transmitted from one vessel through the AIS system could not be received by another vessel. The Swedish Maritime Administration, SMA, issued a navigational warning and soon more reports were received from vessels, saying that their GPS equipment that feeds the AIS system with position data were not working properly. The cause is that the software in certain GPS receivers does not fulfil requirements from new satellites. This has been verified by the US Coast Guard that activated a new satellite six hours before the first alarm. The SMA now urges ships and land based stations to report all abnormalities through its website."
FMEA analyses in the design fase of automation systems may help in defining the worst case failures and how to mitigate the risks. As stated a couple of times in this very interesting discussion, the interface may be a very important key to improving the safety of navigation.
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Permalink Reply by David Morton on -
Training has become key only because the systems have become so complex and dispite the minimum performance standard are hugely varied in what I call iconology.
I've just returned from the Digital Ship conference in Oslo where the subject of how complex, difficult and costly managing ENCs cells was discussed at length. As far as I can see the complexity of the management of the ENCs and the proliferation of software to make it "easy" is aimed purely at reducing the cost to the ship owner. surely the obvious answer is to change the IMO rules so that both Transas TX97 and C-MAP's CM93_ 3 databases are acceptable for primary navigation in Dual ECDIS installations. Since both companies production methods have been certified by DNV. C-MAP even produces ENCs on behalf of quite a number of National HO there should be no need to worry about the quality of the database. In order to qualify other companies chart production systems would have to go through the same QA testing procedure. These private databases are easy to manage and very, very much less expensive. This would allow the HOs to get on with updating the hydrographic information encourage ship owners to adopt ECDIS in meaningful numbers. Higher uptake of the technolgy means more chart royalties for the HOs, lower costs for the ship owners and what we all want Safer Navigation.
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Permalink Reply by Mats Koivisto on -
I agree with you but only if the C-MAP and TX97 are to be made available as standard S/57 cells as well to anybody that may want to use the information. The S/57 is an open standard that should not be compromised and undermined by introducing vendor specific in-house solutions.
I think one of the problems with navigation is that even on high-tech vessels the crew is not being trained in a simulator to use the equipment. This something that would be completely unthinkable in the air world.
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Permalink Reply by Miguel A. Fernández Espadas on -
eNavigation as all hi-tech systems need a cualified crew and with the positive influence on the industry may be is time to change roles and start to think about (e) need a (ETO) on borad for correct use of new tecnologies, undertand the electrotecnical regulations and improve safety in navigation.
M.Fernández
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