The IALA Cloud Concept

The IALA Cloud Concept being developed. No part of the content of this page has been endorsed by IALA, and it should therefore only be interpreted as fantasies of the imagination of the author(s).

IALA Cloud Mission & Vision

Mission: to enable safe and secure global sharing of maritime information while creating value for participants. Vision: to connect all relevant maritime information sources with their relevant consumers and value adding service providers.

Security and Integrity

1. Each member (data owner) determines the destiny of his data .e. who can consume his services
2. A Security Broker ensures that each member can only access services he/she is entitled to
3. All established connections are logged and can be audited.

Facts about IALA Cloud

1. All members are Service Providers as well as Service Consumers
2. IALA Cloud Services may include all internet based services in the coming Maritime Service portfolio.
3. A Service Broker publishes all available services to all members
4. it connects information sources to agreed information consumers safely and securely
5. creates value by providing access to global maritime data and associated value adding services
6. includes appropriate information security measures
7. it is capable of sharing a wide range of data types
8. is a gateway between its members and value added services
9. is based on a highly decentralized technical framework
10. resides in the Cloud (Amazon etc)
11. it is based on Open Source software
12. is capable of including thousands of participating nodes
13. is glued together by only a handful of centralized components
14. will be paid for by the participants
15. costs are covered through contributions from all participants

Members

1. IALA national members
2. IALA industrial members (providing added value services
3. All e-Navigation stakeholders?

Services

It is envisaged that the IALA Cloud will encompass three different types of services:

1. Data Streaming Services
2. Data Delivery Services
3. Data Processing Services

Data Stream Services take place continuously and in near real-time once a connection has been established. Data is transferred transparently from provider to consumer. Some filtering and reduction of data may be done upon request from the consumer in order to reduce the data load when necessary. This type of service includes the traditional IALA-NET AIS data exchange, and will encompass all future streaming or streaming-like services (pushing data from provider to consumer).

Data Delivery Services take place when requested. The service provider delivers a collection of data to the consumer upon his request (data pulling). The exchanged data may include a collection of historical AIS data, a collection of Navigational Warnings, a set of route suggestions, a METOC forecast for a given geographical point etc.

Data Processing Services take place when requested. The consumer provides a data collection to the service provider, the service provider processes the data using some algorithm and delivers back the result. The input to the service provider can be static data collections as well as near real-time data streams. This type of services can include watchdog services, notifying the consumer of suspicious behavior of vessels, presumed grounding or collision incidents, risk estimates

Example Services

	Example Services
Near Real Time Streaming	Near-real time AIS Stream from a given geographical region AIS Watchdog Services. Notifying member if a vessel moves in or out of a given geographic region. Dynamic Vessel Risk Indexes based on a given AIS data collection
Historical AIS Analysis	A collection of Historical AIS data from a given geographical region and time period Passage line statistics AIS Density Plot for a given geographical region and time period based on a given AIS data collection A collection of Near Miss Incidents in a given region based on a given AIS data collection A collection of Incidents of strangely behaving vessels in a given geographical region and time period Sailed distance of a Vessel in a given time period based on a given AIS data collection Estimated TOA for i given vessel based on a fancy algorithm Estimated CO2, NOX and SOX emissions for a given vessel in a given time period AIS shore based system coverage analysis
e-Navigation Services	Navigational Warnings from a given geographical region Notices to Mariners from a given source METOC forecast for a given geographical point and point in time No-Go areas in a given geographical region and time period for a given vessel Vessel Tracks using the IALA VTS Data Exchange Format
Data Fusion	Fusing AIS data with other data sets such as radar data.
Search and Rescue	Last known position of a given vessel What vessels are within a certain radius of a given position where a vessel may be in distress Tracking of a drifting vessel which may be in distress Suggested SAR search pattern as route suggestions in a standard format

When seeking for a service, members consult the Service Brokers for available services. During this search, members can apply the following filters:

Type	Parameter	Resolution
Spatial	Geographic cells	1 degree lat/long
Temporal	Time period	1 minute
Identity	Data Source	Unique
Identity	Vessel Identity	Unique

Having applied the filter, the member is presented with services available, and makes his choice.

Idea: Accessing IALA-NET historical data through a DropBox type of interface....?