The Mona Lisa Project

March 16th, 2012 by JCB
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MONALISA is an EU project by Sweden and Finland to develop the Motorways of the Seas concept for the Baltic. Funding has been obtained from the EU Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency (TEN-T EA)

The aim is “to facilitate the internal cohesion of the Baltic Sea region and to improve its maritime access to the central regions of the Community and to reduce the high transport cost for serving these areas”

This is an e-navigation project consisting of 4 elements and on the face of it seems innocent enough but on closer reading appears more like a Big Brother concept to take full control of shipping in the Baltic and monitor the bridge team from ashore! The following is taken from the project’s (54 page) Strategic Action Plan

1.Dynamic & Proactive Route planning

The Activity aims to develop and test a new model in route planning based on existing Electronic Nautical Charts and Automatic Identification System. Each vessel’s pre-planned route will be visible for other vessels and monitoring centres ashore. The estimated best route and speed plan will be agreed on between captains and pilot centres which have knowledge about the local sailing conditions such as currents, wind and waves, water depth and sea ice that affect sailing time and bunker consumption but also traffic congestion, availability of berth in the next port of call and cargo handling schedules. Radio communications between vessels will not be needed when pre-planned routes clearly describe all navigators intended routes on screens onboard. Monitoring centres and others will immediately see if a vessel is deviating from a its route and will be able to take action. All vessel routes will be available for other ships for anti-collision purpose.

2.Verification of Officers Certificates

When a watchkeeper comes on watch they will have to logon with a smart card reader! The Plan states:

an automatic verification system monitoring officer’s certificates and time on watch will be designed. A maritime ID-card with security codes will be designed and tested. The officer’s certificates will automatically be checked against data bases ashore (via AIS transmission) to ensure validity of certificates. This activity will assure required competence and present means to prevent fatigue which is a common reason for accidents at sea.

3 – Ensuring the Quality of Hydrographic Data on Shipping Routes and Areas

This part incorporates plans to undertake detailed surveys of the routes to create 3D electronic charts.

4. Global Sharing of Maritime Information

This element aims to develop a functional demonstrator system both technically and procedurally defined, with the final objective to extend the sharing of maritime information to a global scale as well as expanding the scope of maritime information shared between maritime authorities in accordance with their needs.

The system will require participating vessels to have a special dedicated screen and it would appear that the ultimate plan is watchkeeper will just sit there and be told what to do. Quite how this will be achieved from a shore station isn’t included in the Strategic Plan which is full of procedural rather than  practical detail. It would appear that the passage planning and optimal routing is intended to be carried out by computer. Once the project, already underway, progresses it will be interesting to see how many shore controllers will be required and how the system will handle the errant fisherman or leisure craft! Watch this space.

The project website is:

www.sjofartsverket.se/en/MonaLisa/

The home page contains an informative video explaining the concept.

I was most amused to see that in the state of the art control centre, the VTS operator overseeing this brave new e-navigation “initiative” was communicating with ships using a VHF handset dangling from a piece of string!                                   JCB

 

UPDATE 4/2012

In March I attended the IALA e-NAV11 session with a different hat, having been sent by the PLA as their IAHM representative. The working group that I was allocated to was dealing with e-navigation “information portrayal” working towards producing an IALA document “Recommendations & Guidelines on the Portrayal of e-Navigation Information”. IALA are particularly interested in the portrayal of navigation marks and virtual aids to navigation via AIS overlays. One of the members of our group was Thomas Porathe, a MonaLisa project leader. As mentioned in the above article, part of this project is looking at greater shore control of shipping by collating vessels’ passage plans and transmitting them to other vessels so that passage tracks can be visible to all other vessels with VTS using the tracks to assist traffic management. Apart from the logistical complexities of such shore control it was interesting to learn from the IEC and CIRM representatives that IMO performance standards will have to be drawn up and approved for any such system to be universally placed on board. As I understand it, the manufacturers can produce any overlay, such as tide, wind and routing data, onto an ECDIS that might be considered desirable but for any overlay to be universally applied to all ship displays, formal IMO performance standards would be required and this would take years and therefore many ambitious projects such as Mona Lisa are some way from reality. However, the new ENC standards of S100 & S101 will facilitate such overlays onto ECDIS and IALA have applied to be a registered body authorised to input data directly into ENC’s so this would be how concepts such as MonaLisa might eventually be realised. Meanwhile, such overlays could be used on PPU’s and pilots in the Baltic have participated in some trials so, if projects such as MonaLisa are seriously about safety of navigation, an immediate solution is available. Take a pilot! JCB