Command of Vessels in the Era of Digitalization

A “Net-Centric” conduct of navigation and ship management

“…Over the years, the further development of technology has clearly resulted into more complex ship structures, adding more and more machinery and navigation systems; all these in turn have transformed the decision-making process at sea into a delicate and complex issue. Moreover, decision-making aboard the ship is heavily influenced by dynamic patterns of collaboration and is associated with different levels of crew responsibilities (Bauldauf et al, 2016;Bauldauf et al, 2018). This team-working environment creates a requirement for information integration across the management, operational, and supporting processes scattered across many functional areas as different services.…”

“…Given that networking and telecommunications technologies keep improving, the net-centric approach to navigation and ship operations management is also expected to further increase operational benefits, such as situational awareness and decision-making at sea, in the near future. Adopting to this philosophy is leading to new concepts of executing navigation and ship management activities, but it also implies new people skills, roles, and new organisational structures (Kitada et al, 2018). Onboard the ship, a net-centric informational environment will provide the mariner with more sophisticated and powerful tools to process and jointly evaluate high-quality data and information coming from a wide variety of sensors and other equipment.…”

“…Considering that the concept "net-centric conduct of operations" quickly dominated the agenda of military affairs, it would be only a matter of time to transfer the same approach into the world of merchant shipping. In recent years, along with increased connectivity at sea, the prevailing engineering approach of integrating all the equipment and systems onboard sea-going vessels has created a framework that the numerous sensors, computer systems and, most importantly, people conducting/supporting shipping operations (for example, seafarers onboard vessels and shore-based superintends, or people involved with provisions of vessel traffic services (VTS)) are all working together in what could be described as a "net-centric" collaborative environment, in order to increase situational awareness and promote safety at sea (Dalaklis et al, 2009;Bauldauf et al, 2018;About Sea Traffic Management, 2019). Optimizing the conduct of operations and boosting profits are also included in the same equation, via applying a similar concept in the shipping company's working environment ashore.…”

Merging Conventionally Navigating Ships and MASS - Merging VTS, FOC and SCC?

“…The traffic scenario for the simulator study was created using historic AIS/radar data from a VTS service, and consisted of more than 15 targets. The simulated area was the German Bight, with good visibility in daylight, moderate wind (<2 BFT), calm sea-state (2), and no current. The ship model used for the experiment was an average 4.000 TEU Panamax Container ship (length 218 m; breadth 32 m) with standard engine, single screw propeller and bow thrusters, nowadays in usually operating for feeder services.…”

“…IMO's e-Navigation initiative makes an effort to introduce state-of-the-art technologies to improve and harmonize the collection, processing and presentation of data and information to support human operators on-board and ashore to ensure safety of navigation from berth-to-berth [1]. Even though e-Navigation clearly addresses the human operators; the captain, the OOW and the whole bridge team as well as the VTS supervisor and his watch standing operators in shore-based centers, e-Navigation is obviously supporting even more enhanced services [2]. Together with the increasing level of digitalization and automation it is supporting the introduction of autonomous navigating and even unmanned ships.…”