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Marine Communications AIS: Getting it Right from the Start The Automatic Identification System (AIS) technology has received its fair share of critics up to present, mainly due to poor made installations and lack of training. The problems are currently tak- ing the focus from the positive side where is has proven to be a most useful tool in enhancing safety and security. Lets start with going back and remind- ing ourselves the initial purpose with AIS as it was thought of when imple- mented by IMO in 1998 (IMO Performance Standard for AIS (MSC.74(69) Annex 3)). "The AIS should improve the safety of navigation by assisting in the efficient navigation of ships, protection of the enviroment, and operation of Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), by satisfying the following functional requirements: 1. in a ship-to-ship mode for collision avoidance; 2. as a means for littoral States to obtain information about a ship and its cargo; and 3. as a VTS tool, i.e. ship-to-shore (traffic management)." These statements are clear and straight forward and should not be misinterpret- ed. To be able to accomplish the basic goals of the performance standard, the onboard user and operator needs to be involved in the process to secure the data transmitted. In this aspect there is a small conflict with the IMO perform- ance standard since it states "The AIS should be capable of: pro- viding information automatically and continuously to a competent authority and other ships, without involvement of ship's personnel;" I believe "...without involvement of ship's personnel;" it is impossible to comply with the requirement to input the required voyage related data and checking the integrity of the AIS sys- tem, hence the need for training that IMO not yet has regulated. IMO has however issued guidelines on the use of AIS (Resolution A.917(22) Adopted on 29 November 2001; "GUIDELINES FOR THE ONBOARD OPERA- TIONAL USE OF SHIPBORNE AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS (AIS)" amended A.956(23) December 5th 2003) that are quite clear and well written, but unfortunately they seem to be forgotten and not well known among mariners. It would be a good idea for manufacturers to include the opera- tional guidelines in their own opera- tional manuals as an appendix. They do state that: "The AIS information transmitted by a ship is of three different types: • fixed or static information, which is entered into the AIS on installation and need only be changed if the ship changes its name or undergoes a major conversion from one ship type to anoth- er; • dynamic information, which, apart from 'Navigational status' information, is automatically updated from the ship sensors connected to AIS; and • voyage-related information, which might need to be manually entered and updated during the voyage." Further down in a table the guidelines also states that the all the different voy- age related data should be manually entered at the start of the voyage and updated when required. Also the answer to the discussion of how the AIS should be activated or not can be found in the IMO operational guidelines: "AIS should always be in operation when ships are underway or at anchor. If the master believes that the continual operation of AIS might compromise the safety or security of his/her ship or where security incidents are imminent, the AIS may be switched off. This might be the case in sea areas where pirates and armed robbers are known to oper- ate. Actions of this nature should always be recorded in the ship's logbook togeth- er with the reason for doing so. The masier should however restart the AIS as soon as the source of danger has dis- appeared. ... In ports AIS operation shoild be in accordance with port requirements." If you talk to safety and security authorities most of them believe that the AIS should remain activated in most areas of the world to enhance the sur- veillance capacity and the capability to distirguish abnormal behaviours there- by m iking protection and control easier. Recently I had the pleasure of being onboard the Caribbean Princess on a cruise in the Caribbean. Captain Giuseppe Romano invited me to the bridga where I had a very interesting discussion about AIS with the Snr. 1st Officer Heikki Laakkonen and the 1st Officer Andrea Spinardi. The Caribbean Princess is one of the most modern cruise ships on the market and has only been in operation since April after being delivered from Fincantieri in late March. She carries a most modern integrated bridge system that includes AIS integrated in all of the five independent radar and ECDIS workpositions. On this ship you can not even find the Minimum Keyboard and Display (MKD) on the bridge. The offi- cer did not even know where the actual AIS unit could be found since the infor- mation from the AIS was fully part of the ncrmal navigation system they used. The deck officers had according to my experience very good knowledge about AIS End did e.g. perform verification test and checking on their system regu- larly according to predefined proce- dures. Even so I felt that some things where missing according to the IMO guidelines that states: "To ensure that own ship's static infor- mation is correct and up-to-date, the OOW should check the data whenever there is a reason for it. As a minimum, this should be done once per voyage or once per month, whichever is shorter. The data may be changed only on the authority of the master. The OOW should also periodically check the following dynamic informa- tion: • positions given according to WGS 84; • over ground; and • sensor information." No routines existed to verify the geo- detic data used by the position provided to the AIS but this is a minor problem since I believe a change to any other data than WGS 84 would quick give an indication on the general bridge system. The gyro used was a fully digital one so little risk existed, compared to older ships when transferring heading data from analogue to digital like on older ships, this was not checked but it would be obvious on other systems if errors would be occurring. The reference point of position for the AIS could not be eas- ily accessed and verified; this was not necessarily the fault of the crew but per- haps the complexity of the Human Machine Interface (HMI). Snr. 1st Officer Laakonen, also verified what is well known: that voyage related data like ETA, destination, draft and cargo are often not available on ships that they meet. The situation is however improv- ing. Related to the input of voyage relat- ed data he saw a great risk in the wrong use of the input of the correct naviga- tional status that in many cases seems to be wrongly input. Further he saw also that the identity of the ships in many cases is wrong or not defined. As I explained before I believe the officers of the Caribbean Princess are a good exam- ple of how to check and verify this data regular. The bridge crew was however very positive in general about AIS and saw mostly advantages with the imple- mentation e.g. improved situation awareness, better identification of ships 280° i 320.2° 1 360° ca 1 15nm 1 m , | ' i \ fa / / J 30.0 \ j H £ / / rN 20.0 i. ^ -J \ \ 8 / / \ 10.0 ^ \iA \ Nauticast Navigationssysteme last month launched an innovative 3-in-l graphical display solution for their X-Pack DS Class A AIS Transponder. 24 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News
