Integrated Ship Traffic Monitoring and Control

10 September 2009, 5:46pm

Tranzas company in conjunction with ScanEx Research and Development Center announced their readiness to integrate new functional solution for improving capabilities of onshore systems for monitoring offshore areas including ship traffic control systems. Using the resources of the Russian leader in the field of space imagery management – ScanEx RDC, the Onshore Systems Department of Tranzas is making plans to considerably extend the usage of satellite radar images as a source of up-to-date and objective information.

In the Russian territory ScanEx Center owns a network of space data receiving stations, which provide near real-time reception and processing of radar images acquired by RADARSAT-1 (Canada) and ENVISAT-1 (European Space Agency) satellites. Data of radar satellites allow performing operational all-weather monitoring of ship traffic and environmental situation in water areas. The new function of displaying promptly received Earth remote sensing data in GeoTIFF format is implemented in Navi-Harbour/Navi-Monitor/AIS-Monitor software package for ship traffic monitoring that belongs to the Onshore Systems Department of Tranzas.

— Simultaneous display of satellite images, ship location and traffic history information (on the basis of information provided by radar sensors, ship traffic control systems, automatic identification systems and LRIT), as well as electronic mapping data offers ambitious prospects in the field of improving and extending functional capabilities of monitoring systems and ship traffic control systems, - believes Roman Modeev, Head of Offshore Systems Department of Tranzas Company.

On the basis of satellite imagery and automatic identification systems, operational services for sea situation monitoring allow solving the entire range of tasks:
— detection of ships involved in oil product spills and violation of environmental law;
— scale assessment and dynamics monitoring of emergency spills propagation in water areas;
— detection of illegal ships (not sending automatic identification signals) including those engaged in illegal fishing;
— detection of injured vessels, ships suffering distress and those with malfunctioning navigation equipment;
— monitoring of ship traffic situation in regions for the convenience of defense departments and the Navy;
— prompt display of ice situation in the area of heavy ship traffic in difficult ice conditions;
— detection of icebergs and monitoring of their drift, etc.

— Offshore satellite monitoring technologies are nowadays efficiently used by foreign countries. The CleanSeaNet service provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency is designed for oil pollution detection. The GMES program is used as a framework for ship traffic tracking and illegal activity detection, etc. I’m confident that our joint activities with specialists of Tranzas Onshore Systems Department will expedite integration of satellite imagery-based technologies in the Russian practice, — said General Director of ScanEx RDC, Vladimir Gershenzon.

The first integrated ship traffic control system produced by Tranzas Company to use operational satellite information provided by ScanEx Center has already been implemented for the needs of the Caspian Region.

New technological capabilities of monitoring systems and ship traffic control systems may become a source of indispensible information in activities of sea port administrations, rescue and response coordination centers, oil and gas producing platforms and companies, Emercom of Russia, Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service, etc.

ScanEx R&D Centre Moscow

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Geo: International