Topical matters

Planning and Reporting of Testbeds in the Maritime Domain

MONALISA 2.0

The new functionality is implemented directly in the ECDIS software and the visualization of the new Voyage Exchange Format, approved by IEC, will be implemented in new bridge equipment. It provides the officer on watch with greater situational awareness and provides new means to communicate intentions and other data with stakeholders.

Preliminary matters

  • Name of testbed: MONALISA 2.0 (MONALISA = Motorways and electronic navigation by intelligence at sea) (Tagline: Taking maritime transport into the digital age)
  • Location of testbed: Baltic Sea & Mediterranean
  • Time and duration of testbed: 2013-2015
  • Status (planned, completed or on-going): Completed
  • Contact person(s): Magnus Sundström (Project Leader) magnus.sundstrom@sjofartsverket.se , Ulf Siwe (Communications Officer) ulf.siwe@sjofartsverket.se
  • Testbed website: www.monalisaproject.eu
  • Organisation(s) involved: Swedish Maritime Adminstration (Project Coordinator), Air Navigation Services of Sweden, Danish Maritime Authority, Danish Meteorological Institute, D´Appolonia, Italian Ministry of Transport, Norwegian Coastal Administration, Port of Livorno, RINA, SASEMAR, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Valencia Port Authority, Valencia Port Foundation, Chalmers University of Technology, National Technical University of Athens, Novia University of Applied Sciences, Technical University of Madrid, University of Catalonia, University of Genua, VEMARS, World Maritime University, Carmenta, Carnival Corporation, CIMNE, Corporacion Maritima, DLR, ERGOPROJECT, Ferri, Fraunhofer, GateHouse, IB, Jeppesen, MARSEC–XL, MARTEC, Navicon, Rheinmetall, SSPA, TRANSAS, Viktoria Swedish ICT
  • Funding programme and budget: EU TEN-T

Executive summary

MONALISA 2.0 encompasses four activities, all of which contribute to improving the safety, environmental performance and efficiency of maritime transport. The main objectives are to strengthen the efficiency, capacity, flexibility, predictability, security, safety and the environmental performance of maritime transport, while simultaneously reducing the administrative burden of the maritime sector.

In MONALISA 2.0, the demonstrated results from the previous project will take a major step towards deployment through joint actions by:

  • testing concrete applications and services that would allow swift commercial deployment
  • joint private-public action to elaborate better standards for route exchange through a common interface and common data format, thereby allowing equipment from all manufacturers to be used for the concept,
  • demonstrating concrete services with the use of new technology to enhance maritime safety,
  • making Search and Rescue and mass evacuation more efficient than is currently the case and by addressing port safety, and
  • transferring the results of previous EU investments in air traffic management to the maritime domain.

Activity 1: Sea Traffic Management – Operations and Tools

Concrete steps and tools to develop the STM concept and the test bed. Some examples are: developing the standard for route exchange, creating the European maritime Simulator Network (used for developing the Formal Safety Assessment), develop Decision Support Tools including Maritime spatial factors, and enhancing Standard Operating Procedures to include new technology..

Activity 2: Sea Traffic Management – Definition Phase

Looking at the current situation and digging deep in to the 5 sub concepts: Strategic Voyage Management, Dynamic Voyage Management, Flow Management, Port Collaborative Decision Making and the underlying infrastructure Sea System Wide Information Management. Defining how all of these will work and making a Master Plan for the implementation until 2030. In this activity, the experiences from aviation are central.

Activity 3 – Safer Ships (Not directly relevant for e-Navigation)

Aiming at improving safety on board large passenger vessels. The Availability of information in Search and Rescue operations is crucial. MONALISA 2.0 will develop tools for the sharing of information among all participants in the event of SAR operations and will test a system for indoor positioning of crew and passenger, allowing for more efficient rescue operations.

Activity 4 – Operational Safety (Not directly relevant for e-Navigation)

Developing new technology supporting safety in port and coastal areas. By using modern technology and tailored training programmes, MONALISA 2.0 can provide tools for identifying and reducing risk, prevent risk situations and optimize actions when accidents occur.

Testbed 1: STM – Operations and Tools

Summary

The new standardised route exchange format (REX) was adopted in IEC (61174 ed 4) in August 2015. This means that all future ECDIS-systems can send and receive route information in a standardised manner. It paves the way for ship to ship route exchange, where all bridge officers will have a common situational awareness of the nearby traffic situation, including the intentions of the surrounding ships. By making the industry itself come up with the standard, consensus came fast and it took only two years from idea to standard.

The testbed also established the world’s first civil maritime simulator network. The European Maritime Simulator Network (EMSN) will help test the STM concept and is the only safe method of testing STM functionality for Search and Rescue and traffic situation in congested areas.

Six simulator centres, four navigational schools, three simulator manufacturers, three research institutes and 18 manned virtual vessels are connected. The geographical spread help testing to see if cultural differences influence the behaviour. All simulators participated in three large-scale simu­lations of complex traffic patterns in the Belt area. All of the 200 people, who in one way or another participated in the exercises, have a close relation to shipping and make decisions similar to those in the simulation on a daily basis.

A majority of the participants said that that the simulations felt very real. The fact that the exercise indeed is very similar to reality contributes to the participants acting as they would in reality. As a result of our extended test bed we have been able to accurately study the full impact of every move and to consider the second and third hand effects of them.

The test bed developed decision support tools. The scenarios that we ran indicated that a vast majority of unplanned encounters can be resolved and that decision support tools make it much less complex to solve potential conflicts and avoid collisions. Planning encounters ahead of time, and having access to information about depth and weather conditions optimises fuel consumption.

The simulations indicated that average fuel consumption can be reduced by up to 10% for vessels joining the information exchange sys­tem and using decision support tools in order to optimise their routes.

Testbed 2: STM – Definition Phase

Summary

In order to avoid future problem caused by development without coherent strategy, the project put a lot of effort into defining the STM concept, the sub-concepts and their relations. The experiences from aviation made the project believe that this was an important, yes, even necessary task.

The aviation input also gave rise to the need to start building a testbed for Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM). The three other functional concepts, Strategic Voyage Management, Dynamic Voyage Management and Flow Management, exist in some ways today, whereas PortCDM is brand new.

For each of the functional concepts, the project defined possible value adding services; either enhancements to existing ones or defining new ones. These services are based on the route exchange standard and coming port message standards. The project did not define other services that could be based on other future implementations of standards, e.g. goods information, reporting standards and maintenance information.

Supporting all services is a Maritime Service Infrastructure. Inspired by the SESAR System Wide Information Services(SWIM), we created the SeaSWIM concept, having connectors underlying service and id registries. SeaSWIM is layered in order to be able to adapt to new underlying technologies and solutions.

Every suggested service and infrastructure development was included in a master plan, which envisions what to implement by 2020, 2025 and 2030 respectively.

The testbed looked into FSA, business case and other aspects. All very important when conveying the concept to the world.

Since the PortCDM concept was totally new to the industry, two demonstrations were setup in Port of Gothenburg and Port of Valencia, which helped identify the method to use for further development – LivingLabs

Relevant documents

Results Testbed 1

STM Voyage exchange format (RTZ) and architecture

EMSN Infrastructural Specification

Tools for decision support, route planning and anomaly detection

Results Testbed 2

STM – The Target Concept

STM Master Plan & Live Master Plan

PortCDM Validation Report

Formal Safety Assessment

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Videos

Sea Traffic Management (MONALISA 2.0)

MONALISA 2.0 – Route exchange benefits in practice

MONALISA 2.0 – an introduction

MONALISA 2.0 OneYear results

EMSN – European Maritime Simulator Network

PortCDM

Sea Traffic Management (STM) – a look at the future