MONALISA 2.0 and the sea traffic management - a concept creating the need for new maritime information standards and software solutions

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Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary Area to be Avoided (ATBA) Education and Monitoring Program

The National Marine Sanctuaries Act (16 U.S.C. 1431, as amended) gives the Secretary of Commerce the authority to designate discrete areas of the marine environment as National Marine Sanctuaries and provides the authority to promulgate regulations to provide for the conservation and management of these marine areas. The waters of the Outer Washington Coast were recognized for their high natural resource and human use values and placed on the National Marine Sanctuary Program Site Evaluation List in 1983. In 1988, Congress directed NOAA to designate the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (Pub. L. 100-627). The Sanctuary, designated in May 1994, worked with the U.S. Coast Guard to request the International Maritime Organization designate an Area to be Avoided (ATBA) on the Olympic Coast. The IMO defines an ATBA as "a routeing measure comprising an area within defined limits in which either navigation is particularly hazardous or it is exceptionally important to avoid casualties and which should be avoided by all ships, or certain classes of ships" (IMO, 1991). This ATBA was adopted in December 1994 by the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO, “in order to reduce the risk of marine casualty and resulting pollution and damage to the environment of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary”, (IMO, 1994). The ATBA went into effect in June 1995 and advises operators of vessels carrying petroleum and/or hazardous materials to maintain a 25-mile buffer from the coast. Since that time, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS) has created an education and monitoring program with the goal of ensuring the successful implementation of the ATBA. The Sanctuary enlisted the aid of the U.S. and Canadian coast guards, and the marine industry to educate mariners about the ATBA and to use existing radar data to monitor compliance. Sanctuary monitoring efforts have targeted education on tank vessels observed transiting the ATBA. OCNMS's monitoring efforts allow quantitative evaluation of this voluntary measure. Finally, the tools developed to monitor the ATBA are also used for the more general purpose of monitoring vessel traffic within the Sanctuary. While the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary does not currently regulate vessel traffic, such regulations are within the scope of the Sanctuary’s Final Environmental Impact Statement/Management Plan. Sanctuary staff participate in ongoing maritime and environmental safety initiatives and continually seek opportunities to mitigate risks from marine shipping.(PDF contains 44 pages.

Proposed AIS Binary Message Format Using XML for Providing Hydrographic-related Information

UNH is working with the USCG and NOAA to use XML (Extensible Markup Language) to define binary messages for maritime-based AIS (Automatic Identification System). A draft specification format is under development that will enable hydrographic and maritime safety agencies to encode AIS message contents by providing a bit-level description in XML (informally known the AIS Binary Message Decoder Ring ). An AIS binary message definition in XML specifies the order, length, and type of fields following a subset of that used by the ITU-R.M.1371-1. The specification is independent of programming language (e.g., can be implemented in C, C++, C#, Java, Python, etc.) to allow vendors to integrate the system into their individual design requirements. The draft specification also contains a reference implementation of an AIS XML to Python compiler that has been released as open-source under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. A XML schema and an additional program will provide validation of the XML message definitions. A XSLT style sheet produces reference documentation in ‘html’ format. Although the XML message definition file specifies the order, size, and type of the bit stream, it does not specify semantics or how binary messages should be displayed on a shipboard ECDIS, or presented on other shipboard/shore-side display devices

Enhancing AIS to Improve Whale-Ship Collision Avoidance and Maritime Security

Whale-ship strikes are of growing worldwide concern due to the steady growth of commercial shipping. Improving the current situation involves the creation of a communication capability allowing whale position information to be estimated and exchanged among vessels and other observation assets. An early example of such a system has been implemented for the shipping lane approaches to the harbor of Boston, Massachusetts where ship traffic transits areas of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary frequently used by whales. It uses the Automated Identification Systems (AIS) technology, currently required for larger vessels but becoming more common in all classes of vessels. However, we believe the default mode of AIS operation will be inadequate to meet the long-term needs of whale-ship collision avoidance, and will likewise fall short of meeting other current and future marine safety and security communication needs. This paper explores the emerging safety and security needs for vessel communications, and considers the consequences of a communication framework supporting asynchronous messaging that can be used to enhance the basic AIS capability. The options we analyze can be pursued within the AIS standardization process, or independently developed with attention to compatibility with existing AIS systems. Examples are discussed for minimizing ship interactions with Humpback Whales and endangered North Atlantic Right Whales on the east coast, and North Pacific Right Whales, Bowhead Whales, Humpback Whales, Blue Whales and Beluga Whales in west coast, Alaskan and Hawaiian waters