Use of Portable Piloting Units by Maritime Pilots

The use of electronic navigation equipment onboard maritime vessels continues to increase, worldwide. The results of a recent Canadian study provide clear evidence that maritime pilots know what types of equipment to use -- and how to use them

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool

In 1996, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool embarked on a strategy for growth and diversification by significantly expanding its asset base. This expansion brought with it many new costs, especially new fixed costs such as interest and depreciation. They failed to achieve the new revenues needed to support the higher fixed costs and consequently, found themselves in financial distress. In 2000, Mayo Schmidt was brought in as CEO to turn the company back to profitability. His strategy was to sell off all non-core assets and focus on the core businesses that built the company; grain handling and supplying farm inputs. 2004 would be a crucial year for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.Publicly traded co-operative, Business strategy, Financial distress, Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries,

InSPeCT: Integrated Surveillance for Port Container Traffic

This paper describes a fully-operational content-indexing and management system, designed for monitoring and profiling freight-based vehicular traffic in a seaport environment. The 'InSPeCT' system captures video footage of passing vehicles and uses tailored OCR to index the footage according to vehicle license plates and freight codes. In addition to real-time functionality such as alerting, the system provides advanced search techniques for the efficient retrieval of records, where each vehicle is profiled according to multi-angled video, context information, and links to external information sources. Currently being piloted at a busy national seaport, the feedback from port officials indicates the system to be extremely useful in supplementing their existing transportation-security structures

Transports et développement économique de la région marseillaise

Dans le cadre de l'Europe des Six, il existe un déséquilibre économique fondamental entre le bassin rhénan et la région méditerranéenne ; cette dernière, moins densément peuplée et moins développée, cherche à combler un fossé qui risque de s'élargir de plus en plus avec l'élimination des frontières économiques entre les six Etats membres de la C.E.E.Le port et la région de Marseille sont particulièrement bien situés à cet égard, à l'extrémité sud du grand axe fluvial Mer du Nord-Méditerranée. L'aménagement de cet axe pour les unités fluviales de 1 350 tonnes (« gabarit européen »), en cours de réalisation ou en projet, s'inscrit dans cette perspective. Cette grande voie navigable, que suivraient autoroute, chemin de fer, électricité et oléoduc, permettrait à la région du port de Marseille et de ses annexes de devenir I' « Europort du Sud ». En effet, depuis quelques années, tout un complexe industriel est venu se greffer aux raffineries de pétrole de l'Etang de Berre, et l'extension des installations portuaires et industrielles dans le Golfe de Fos permettra le déchargement des grands minéraliers et le démarrage d'une industrie sidérurgique. Bien plus que les perspectives d'un arrière-pays européen élargi, c'est la perte d'une partie du trafic traditionnel de Marseille de 1958 à 1962, le trafic colonial, qui a permis à la région de développer sa vocation pétrolière et industrielle.Within the framework of the European Economic Community there is a fundamental economic imbalance between the Rhine basin and the Mediterranean regions ; the latter, less densely occupied and less developed, seek to bridge a gap which is bound to widen increasingly with the elimination of tariff barriers between the six member States of the E.E.C.The port complex and metropolitan region of Marseilles are especially well located in this respect, at the southern end of the great North Sea - to - Mediterranean inland waterway axis. The improvement of the latter for use by 1 350-ton river craft (this being known as the « European draft »), under construction or planned, falls within this perspective. Such a deep-draft waterway, followed by an expressway, an electrified trunk rail-way, and an oil pipeline, would allow the Marseilles port region and its tributary facilities to become « the Europort of the South ». In fact, for the past few years, an entire industrial complex has been established in the wake of the construction of the large petroleum refineries around the Etang de Berre, and the extension of these harbour and industrial facilities into the Gulf of Fos will permit the unloading of large ore and coal carriers and the beginnings of a coastal steel industry. Far more than the prospect of an enlarged European hinterland, it is the loss of part of Marseilles's traditional traffic, between 1958 and 1962, i.e. the colonial traffic, which has allowed the region to develop its petrochemical and industrial functions