About IALA

VTS (Vessel Traffic Services)

Chair: Monica Sundklev (Swedish Transport Agency), Vice Chair: Dirk Eckhoff (Federal Waterways & Shipping Administration)

The VTS Committee produces a range of Recommendations, Guidelines and Model Courses related to the IALA Standards.

COMMITTEE WORK AND STRUCTURE

The work of the VTS Committee is structured into three working groups (WG) to deliver the 2018 – 2022 work plan. They are:

  • WG1 – Operations
  • WG2 – Technology
  • WG3 – VTS Training

VTS Committee meetings are normally held at IALA HQ in Paris and the Committee meets normally twice per year.

The duration of a Committee meeting is normally five days (Monday lunch to Friday lunch).

Committee meetings will be conducted in IALA’s working language – English including all input and output documents.

IALA Secretariat will inform all members of the dates of each Committee meeting by email. Participants are requested to register at IALA web site.

Input documents for a Committee meeting should be sent to the Secretariat no later than one month before the meeting and will be published on the member section of the IALA web site, no later than two weeks before the meeting. Documents should conform to the standard Template, Input documents.

Documents for consideration at a meeting will be numbered by the Secretariat in a way that indicates the meeting number, the agenda item to which they refer and a numbering sequence.

Working papers (WP) are documents to be carried over to a subsequent meeting.

Output documents are documents completed and agreed by the Committee. They include draft standards recommendations, guidelines and other documents for submission to Council for approval before they can be published.

The VTS Committee work is mainly organized according to four IALA Standards, as follows:

Standard 1040 Vessel traffic Services

Scope:

  • VTS implementation
  • VTS operations
  • VTS data and information management
  • VTS communications
  • VTS technologies
  • VTS auditing and assessing
  • VTS additional services

Standard 1050 Training and Certification

Scope:

  • Training and assessment
  • Competency, certification and revalidation

Standard 1060 Digital Communication Technologies

Scope:

  • Harmonised maritime connectivity framework (CMDS) Maritime Internet of Things (intelligent sensors, AtoN monitoring)

Standard 1070 Information Services

Scope:

  • Data models and data encoding (IVEF, S-100, S-200, ASM)

For a detailed description of the present tasks within the VTS Committee, see Work Programme for Committees 2018-2022.

Policy and procedures for the IALA Committees

Committees are established by IALA Council to study matters relevant to the aim of IALA with the objective of preparing standards, recommendations, guidelines and manuals for IALA members and submissions to other organisations.

Committees will work under the rules stated in the General Regulations.

All IALA members are eligible to participate in the Committees established by IALA Council.

The work of every Committee should be planned and structured to meet the Goals and Strategies of the Strategic Vision of IALA and may also take account of any shorter-term priorities.

Each draft document to be created by a Committee must be essential to meeting the Goals and Priorities of the Strategic Vision.

Draft Committee documents become IALA official documentation after approval by Council or the General Assembly in the case of standards and are then made available by the IALA Secretariat on the website for public use.

A Committee may:

  1. study matters relevant to the aims of IALA, with the objective of preparing Standards, Recommendations, Guidelines and Manuals, and submissions to other organisations in accordance with the Work Programme approved by Council; or
  2. address other objectives as established by Council.

A Committee should carry out its work in accordance with the following Terms of Reference.

  1. The purpose of a Committee is to create draft documents, for example draft standards, recommendations, guidelines, and manuals.
  2. These documents should be directed to meeting the Goals of the Strategic Vision, with effort concentrated on documents required by the content of the Priorities for the period 2018-2022 in the Strategic Vision.
  3. The Committee should work to a Work Programme which has been agreed by the IALA Council and this Work Programme should clearly show the deliverables as the draft documents indicated in (1) and (2) above.
  4. The Committee’s progress with its work and achievement of its deliverables should be reported to PAP (Policy Advisory Panel) and Council at regular intervals.

Committee members should ensure that they:

  • act honestly and in good faith, with a view to upholding the best interests and purpose of IALA;
  • advise the Committee of a perceived, potential, or actual conflict of interest and withdraw from discussion of that particular item, if appropriate;
  • do not conduct any commercial activity within IALA HQ; and
  • keep IALA products free from unresolved or unreasonable intellectual property rights issues and claims.