CONTENTS LIST Special issue of Digital Ship Plus - report on Digital Ship London Nov 4-6 Highlights page 1 Digital Ship Award winners Day one - using technology to improve shipping safety Dimitris Lyras, Lyras Shipping - George Barclay, Equasis - Warwick Norman, RightShip - Bjorn Berger, DNV Software - Giampiero Soncini, Xantic - Mark Holford, UK P+I Club - Andrew Craig Bennett - Richard Brown, Weathernews - Improving navigation safety - John Muldowney, C-MAP - Day two - using technology to improve shipping security Bob Haddow, Drum Cussac Maritime - Chris Ellison, MUSC - Peter Kidman, LISCR - Will Attfield, Simrad - Raphael Kahn, Secure Ship - Brian Mullan, Inmarsat - Julian Longson, Pole Star - Roger Ringstad, Seagull - Trevor Whitworth, Telaurus - Jimmy Millard, 2-Track - Day three - improving efficiency in ship operations Neil Tomlinn, ShipNet - Mickey Watzak, Maritime Bridge - Johan Pellas, Wärtsilä - Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, AMMITEC - P&O Nedlloyd and Fleet - Christian Kock, Thrane and Thrane - Adrian MacAllister, Stratos - Adam Webster, Marconi Selenia - Alan Leach, Globe Wireless - Pål Jensen, Telenor Sealink - Steve Harding, 3gmarine Original presentations from Digital Ship London can be downloaded from www.thedigitalship.com/presentations.htm BODY Digital Ship invited the world's leading companies and individuals in the maritime information technology to London for 3 days in November, to talk about how technology can add the most value to the industry in terms of improving maritime safety, security and efficiency. Now that most shipping companies have had their fingers burnt one way or another through their technology purchases, getting new systems out on the market is more difficult than ever. Who can come up with the products and services with the right combination of low price, easy installation, low training requirements and high savings to get the products on the market? There are plenty of ideas; Andrew Craig Bennett thinks there is no possible reason why ships are required to carry any physical paper on them at all; it is far easier and cheaper for everybody, shipping companies and regulators, if it was all hosted securely on the internet. Dimitris Lyras thinks that the current process of inspecting ships has a lot of room for improvement; an inspector can only gain a snapshot of the quality of the vessel at that specific point, and does not gain access of some of the real information which would indicate a ship's quality, for example whether they follow the recommended maintenance intervals or the quality of the crewing. Although most shipping companies have this information readily available via their maintenance software, if they were prepared to give company outsiders access to it. There were some surprising announcements; Equasis is planning to offer its information about the port state control deficiencies for every ship in the world as a web service, so banks and others can integrate it directly into their systems; Sealink plans to offer fixed price global VSAT communications for $4,500 per year including equipment lease. If you are interested in how maritime IT can add value but couldn't make it to the conference, or even if you did make it to the conference, we suggest that you read on. SUBHEAD Digital Ship 2003 Award winners CONTRIBUTION TO SHIPPING SECURITY 1st prize: Transas: ISPS system for ports and port vicinity, using a combination of VTS, AIS, radar and CCTV 2nd prize: Ulysses Systems: software to help seafarers comply with ISPS code CONTRIBUTION TO SHIPPING SAFETY 1st prize: Nowcasting International, delivering and displaying short-term weather data onboard ships, time resolution one hour rather than 6 hours, space resolution 1 mile rather than 30 miles, tidal height accuracy 0.1m rather than 0.5m 2nd prize, C-Map, software to gather all navigation information, including charts and weather and routing information onto a single screen CONTRIBUTION TO SHIPPING EFFICIENCY Joint 1st prize: ShipServ, allowing shipping companies, suppliers and logistics providers to purchase and manage ship supplies electronically allowing shipping companies, suppliers and logistics providers to purchase and manage ship supplies electronically Joint 1st prize: Xantic, AMOS F-MIS which gives ship managers an overview of Fleet Key Performance Indicators: costs, consumptions, time before breakdown/repair, budgets SPECIAL AWARD FOR INNOVATION Joint 1st prize: Vector, maritime management software which sends alerts to staff members by e-mail with links which automatically open the relevant software module, rather than requiring them to search through the software menus to find out what they have to do Joint 1st prize: Broadband Maritime and Danaos have partnered to combine an affordable VSAT broadband communications system with a ship management software suite for effective and secure vessel to office networks JUDGES: Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, IT consultant to Stelmar Tankers and president of AMMITEC; Patrick Slesinger, chief information officer, Wallem Shipmanagement; Adonis Violaris, ICT manager, Hanseatic Shipping, Pradeep Chawla, quality manager, Anglo Eastern Shipmanagement, Dr Andy Norris, chairman IEC Technical Committee 80 (navigation and displays); Barry Parker (New York), Steve Harding (UK) and Pawan Agarwal (Delhi), Digital Ship writers SUBHEAD Dimitris Lyras Dimitris Lyras, director of Lyras Shipping, talked about ways information technology can be used to improve the ways ships are assessed for safety. Ships are currently required to undergo around 18 inspections per year, including port state control, he said. But there are much better ways to assess the safety of a ship than a shipboard inspection. A vetting inspection is just a snapshot of the condition of the vessel at a specific point in time. But there are many pieces of information a vetting inspection cannot provide, particularly, has the ship exceeded the critical repair intervals for shipboard equipment. Mr Lyras made a comparison with the way surgeons are assessed. No-one judges a surgeon on their last operation, but looks at all the operations they have performed in their lifetimes in order to get an assessment of how good they are. Similarly for shipping, to get a true picture of the quality of a vessel you need to know how it has performed over its whole lifetime, not just how it looks during the vetting inspection. Several oil companies are developing a "Key Performance Indicator" system for the maritime industry, whereby shipping companies can rate themselves according to the requirements on the Vessel inspection Questionnaire (VIQ). This includes asking shipping companies if they have a planned maintenance system, and if so, they have to demonstrate it and show they know how to use it. You need to know about the status of defects, the status of critical spares, whether the ship has enough spares onboard all the time (not just when the inspector is onboard). It is also very hard to monitor the safety management of a manning organisation during a shipboard vetting inspection, although the quality of the crew is probably the main factor in the safety of the ship. Mr Lyras brought up the issue of shipboard alerts and alarms, and how seafarers spend a lot of their time dealing with them. "Is it a safer operation having whistles whistling at you?" he asked. Mr Lyras said that dials were, in a way, more important than alarms - the information is available when the seafarer needs it. "You need dials. Its information recorded in a tidy way you can keep track of and access," he said. An alarm without a dial, he said, is like an alarm clock without a clock. Safety management is very difficult and it needs to be done in a clever way, he said. You need to attract the attention of the right people. Very few ships provide good information about their operations to the shipping company apart from the standard log sheets and noon reports. There's always a shortage of personnel in the shipmanagement company because you only really need people when unusual circumstances are happening, he said. Getting the attention of the fleet managers can be very difficult, he said, and you need to avoid tangling them up in technology discussions. Training staff how to use software is a major barrier in its implementation, he said. "One oil company had about 24 people doing software training over 2 years on 50 ships," he said. "They couldn't do anything properly because they couldn't get approval for things." "LNG ships have spent £20k per vessel per year trying to train people to use the shipmanagement systems," he said. "Avoid systems difficult to configure," he said. "Avoid systems difficult to install, maintain and upgrade onboard. If you are using things people don't understand it doesn't work." SUBHEAD George Barclay, Equasis George Barclay, secretariat of Equasis, talked about the development of his system, an online tool for finding out about safety record of ships (www.equasis.org). The service will provide information about any detentions the ship has had from nearly all port state control bodies around the world, and give you the reasons for any detention. An ILO list will show you the ILO conventions ratified by the flag state of the vessel. Equasis was founded in May 2000 and was funded until the end of December 2001 by the EU and France; from June 1 this year, Spain, Singapore and Japan started funding it. The site has data from quality carrot systems Qualship 21 (run by the US Coastguard) and the Green Award. Equasis has deep hyperlinks into the class societies websites, so it can provide information about specific vessels, with information that class societies are required to make public under EU legislation. Equasis can tell you if an OCIMF (Oil Companies Industry Marine Forum) or CDI (Chemical Distribution Institute) database exists for a specific ship - although you can't see the OCIMF or CDI data unless you have agreement with them (for OCIMF, you have to be either a charterer or a government agency). Equasis aims to provide the address of the shipping company, giving the address where you can phone and get hold of somebody (not, for example, the brass plate address where the company is deemed to reside for tax or other reasons). Equasis has taken 3 years in discussion with OCIMF, just in order that it could show with an OCIMF logo if a ship has an OCIMF file. OCIMF was reluctant to allow this, for fear of prosecution under competition law. "OCIMF is owned by the oil majors, the bulk of these are American, they are terrified about the anti-trust possibilities," he said. However Mr Barclay noted that with around 1500 questions, the OCIMF report is very confusing for the average user and not necessarily helpful unless they know how to interpret it. Equasis is currently negotiating with the IMO so that flag state comments received after any ship detention can also be published. Plans are underway to allow bulk download of Equasis data, or to provide the data as web services rather than web pages, to make the data easier to manipulate in other systems. This does involve major rebuild on the 5-year-old database and webhosting technology and also requires the approval of the Equasis supervisory board. "We're not sure what format it will take, and we will probably charge for it," says Mr Barclay. SUBHEAD Warwick Norman, RightShip Warwick Norman, CEO of Australian online ship quality assessment tool RightShip, talked about his service, which provides guidance as to the quality of most of the world shipping fleet. It was formed in October 2001. Subscribers can find out if RightShip considers a ship to be suitable for charter or recommends further inspections. The assessment is made on a number of different factors including data and human inspections. "The maritime industry has a long history of a lack of clarity," said Mr Norman. "There were 20 serious incidents with bulk carriers between June and July of this year - they don't get publicised." Mr Norman pointed out that the OCIMF database does require a certain level of skill to interpret the information; more information doesn't necessarily mean better information. RightShip, by contrast, is intended to provide very simple guidance. The vetting system can capture incidents involving the ship (accidents), port state control information, government restrictions, owners' performance, charterers' feedback, terminal feedback, inspectors, where charterers indicate that the shipping company is a preferred supplier or a non-preferred supplier. "In the days gone by a vessel with poor performance in one terminal can bounce around the world," he said. "Now we can track them." RightShip does a number of inspections itself, but only inspecting vessels deemed by the system to be of high risk. The system is not intended to cause more headaches to shipowners. The majority of owners don't see anything of our systems," he said. "We're not interfering at all." When the European Union circulated a "blacklist" of vessels, all 55 of them were deemed either of medium or high risk on the Equasis system. Mr Norman was asked about what happens if RightShip makes a mistake, for example saying that a ship is of bad quality when it isn't. "If we make mistakes we wouldn't put them out of business," he asserted. "The charterer has a choice anyway." "We have a number of different ways we can deal with a vessel which is ranking high risk," he said. "We can audit the company - if a company is successful his whole fleet will be upgraded. We would work with the shipowners to help them get better." Mr Norman stressed that he is not trying to fail vessels. "I want to make as many of the 44,000 vessels open to customers to use," he said. "They don't want me taking 50 per cent of the shipping market out of action." Mr Norman raised the paradox of asking shipping companies to report their casualties, if it penalises companies that have casualties then the companies which don't report casualties go up in the ratings and the companies that do report them go down. "We have to make sure we don't penalise people just for reporting," he said. SUBHEAD Bjorn Berger, DNV Software Bjorn Berger, principle business advisor in business development section of DNV Software, talked about how class societies can make data available by web services, rather than just posting it on their websites. DNV Software is based in Oslo, and mainly creates software for DNV, but also works for other organisations. It has an office in London which creates risk management software. Web services are about connecting machine to machine, he said. It is the third generation of the internet, following after e-mail (the first generation) and web pages (the 2nd generation). 56 per cent of US companies are building web services technology, he said. The focus in maritime information technology, he said, is now moving to when and why. People have the technology available to do what they want, so the question is more, should they integrate systems together and when should they invest the money. Mr Berger also brought up the issue of key performance indicators. IUM Shipmanagement, he said, is looking at introducing them, and so is Teekay, and the technology to manage the data is bring brought out. SUBHEAD Giampiero Soncini, Xantic Giampiero Soncini, head of Far East software sales, Xantic, said that shipping companies can learn to gain value out of the regulatory regimes being imposed on them. "Shipping is now plagued by rules and regulations," he said. "For this I blame the shipping world. We have not been able to convince the media that we can do a good job when it comes to handling vessels." The answer, he said, was making the rules work to help the shipping company, not cause extra problems. "If I have to comply with something why not take advantage of it," he said. "We can control the non conformities." Software tools can help people measure and manage things, he said. "People always know how much the software costs," he says. "When I say how much did the accident cost they don't know. We can work better - IT is a big part of it." "Find me one shipowner who knows the value of his stock onboard. Only some American managers do," he said. "I find a lot of shipowners with one or two ships and no computers doing an excellent job," he said. "But when they have more than a few ships - I've found complicated situations and disastrous situations." The equipment suppliers could be more helpful in providing better data about their own equipment, he said. "The documentation that comes with equipment installed onboard is 50 percent c***," he said. "The equipment reliability is kept secret by the equipment supplier as though it was their bank account. If shipowners were able to collect this information it would be fantastic." Shipping companies themselves are just as reluctant to share data and make it available. "The main problem with the ERIKA was that it took us 7 days to find out who the owner was," he said. Some kind of co-ordinated effort in the industry to improve the situation is required, he said. "I like what AMMITEC is doing - putting together the shipping IT people to co-ordinate the efforts." When buying software, about 10-15 per cent of shipping companies are the "prime movers," who want the best ships and the best software, he said. Then there is 40 per cent of shipping companies which can be considered to be followers, and 45-50 per cent which are a "lost cause". Mr Soncini's approach is to sell software by trying to understand if a company can benefit from IT. "Don't try to install IT on ships unless you have the full backup and support of the people behind you," he said. "I only see contracts when I see motivation and interest." "It must be continuously used," he said. "It is not the software which makes the installation successful, it's the people using it. The most common reason for failure is the lack of interest from the owner." "Training is a must - no training is no cure," he said. Mr Soncini tackled the tricky issue of making software user friendly. "My answer is - all software is user friendly - it just depends if you know how to use it." Customers today often ask for less functionality, because they find software has so much functionality it is too complex; but then if offered a piece of software with less functionality than something else at the same price they feel ripped off. "You must use the software to remember how to use it," he said. "Shipboard software has to do a lot of complex stuff." Mr Soncini talked about a recent project installing maintenance management software for Italian shipping company GRIMALDI. As a result of using the software, the company reduced its maintenance and repair costs by 8.5 per cent in the 1st year, 2.5 per cent in the 2nd year and 5 per cent in the 3rd year, a total of 16 per cent reduction. "I said, next time I'm not going to charge you anything but I want a percentage of the saving," he said. One problem with selling software to shipowners, he said, is that shipowners only give their full attention to issues which can impact the gross revenue of the ship - since the shipboard software can only really change 1 per cent of the gross revenue it is hard to get their attention. SUBHEAD Mark Holford, UK P+I Club Mark Holford, senior manager and director of e-Business with Thomas Miller, the managers of the UK P+I Club with the UK P+I Club, talked about the P+I Club's efforts to identify causes of accidents. "The majority of claims are caused by human error," he said, "but that's rather a glib term." "We're trying to distinguish between problems due to hardware, design, maintenance, incompatible goals, error enforcing conditions," he said. "We try to look for those types of errors that may be likely." SUBHEAD Andrew Craig Bennett Maritime commentator and Lloyds List columnist Andrew Craig Bennett talked about his experiences 20 years ago, when he was responsible for a cruise liner in the South China Sea. He had not heard from the ship for 3 days, and worried that it had sunk without trace, also with a typhoon having passed the ship's track, sent the vessel a message "how are you". A message came back "I'm fine Andrew how are you." Since then the volume of information sent to and from ships has been growing exponentially and will continue to do so. However the maritime industry is still far more comfortable with paper and needs more and more of it. "Not so long ago I spent £186 on courier fees to get one bit of paper to Japan," he said. Mr Craig Bennett tackled the issue of certificates which are required to be actually stored onboard the ship. "We have training certificates, certificates of competence, certificates identifying the ship, certificates identifying the owners." "You have the hard data, how long is the ship, her beam. Then you have the soft data that you might want to lie about - the speed and the draft." "Then we have certificates - does the ship comply with international regulations. Wouldn't we rather know this before the ship gets into port? We can't know because the certificates are on the ship." "The next question is - who is on the ship. We have to look at the certificates, which might be forged." "The next question is, what is on it." Mr Craig-Bennett said that rather than put all this information actually onboard the ship, it should be posted on the internet somewhere, encrypted. "The internet is good enough for merchant shipping," he said. Along with the ship's documents, there could also be information about the seafarers, which is already stored in other computer systems - for example, including a photograph of the seafarers. "This is not difficult to do," he said. "We would save a fortune and greatly simplify international regulations." "Why don't we do it? I don't know," he said. In a separate discussion, Mr Craig-Bennett raised the issue of information overload on the bridge. "Can I urge everyone to look at the Bahamas collision report into the collision with Norwegian Sky," he said. "In my opinion there is no doubt the cause of this is information overload on the bridge." One problem is that shipboard equipment suppliers expect seafarers to be able to switch easily between using all the different systems on the bridge; they don't integrate easily or use standard functions. SUBHEAD Weathernews Richard Brown, Richard Brown, vice president of marine services development at Weathernews (formerly Oceanroutes), talked about how the quality of weather information available has dramatically improved over the last 10 years. A 12 hour forecast made 10 years ago is as good as a 72 hour forecast now, he said. Weathernews has created a new technology called Climatological Resistance that works out the likelihood of the ship encountering climate resistance based on an average of data gathered over many years. Test results show that using this technology has improved the calculated estimated times of arrival by as much as 8 per cent. Most vessels have a very limited amount of weather data available onboard. If only a 3-4 day forecast is available on a ship, this will restrict the Captain to making more tactical decisions rather then strategic. The key to finding the safest and most efficient route is not only having access to the long range forecast and tools like Climatological Resistance, but also having experience at determining what the best solution is for that specific weather pattern. Weathernews has over 1,200 vessels underway at any given time and has vast experience at evaluating and selecting the optimum route under all types of weather patterns on a global scale. "The key to making the best decisions is having accurate and timely data," he said. "You can see exactly what's going on." The company is developing a shipboard security alert system, which also sends tracking data continuously to the shore office. Using the tracking data, combined with the weather data the office staff can better manage their fleet. Mr Brown stressed that Weathernews is not aiming to overload the mariner with more information. Often the Captain is extremely busy prior to departure and doesn't have adequate time to thoroughly evaluate their routeing options. With Weathernews extensive weather data and thorough route evaluation, Weathernews can help the Captain pick a safe and efficient route as well as save him time. Insurance companies are starting to require that shipping companies use weather routing, to minimise the possible damage to the cargo, he said. The company can typically reduce trans-ocean crossing times by 16 hours, and sometimes up to 30 hours, by recommending the best route, he claimed. Mr Brown noted that weather data is available free of charge for the whole world; companies add value in their ability to provide a higher quality forecast tailored to their clients and in helping shipping companies reduce their weather risk. "I ultimately see our business as 90 per cent risk management consultancy, and 10 per cent forecasting" he said. Weathernews was recently involved in routing a vehicle carrier with $40m of luxury vehicles onboard, going from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal, working for the insurer, AIG. The Captain's intended route was via the English Channel towards the Panama Canal which would take the vessel by the Azores. Weathernews was commissioned by AIG, the insurer, to help ensure that the safest, most efficient route was taken. The company recommended a track that took the vessel much further north than the Captain's intended route due to an unusual storm track that was developing near 40N directly in the path of the vessel. Had the Captain followed his original intended route, the vessel would have encountered storm force winds and seas over 7m. However, by adhering to Weathernews' route recommendation, the vessel only encountered winds of force 7 and seas of 3-4M. With the storm avoided and the safety of the cargo and crew intact, the vessel enjoyed smooth sailing for the remainder of the voyage. In addition to protecting the cargo and potentially helping AIG avoid a claim, the route recommendation saved over 30 hours of sailing time translating to a savings of $8,000 in fuel costs, Weathernews says. SUBHEAD Improving navigation safety Maritime consultant and researcher Carl Bennett talked about improving the errors made by seafarers. "80 per cent of accidents are attributed to human error," he said. "There is one navigation error that matters, not being where you should be," he said. Other human errors include fatigue, going at excess speed, poor watchkeeping and not knowing how to use shipboard navigation equipment. "Fatigue kills people. People can be working 80 or 90 hours per week," he said. Mr Bennett reserved some blame for the manufacturers of shipboard bridge systems and the training they provide. "Often there is no induction for new kit," he said. "Screens help us cope with real life by reducing it to a representation," he said. Dr Andy Norris, chairman, said that he thought software and navigation equipment should be totally intuitive; people should not need to be trained how to use it. Dr Norris said that the human factors issues were ultimately much more difficult to solve than the technology issues. "Technology issues can be solved," he said. Rune Johnsen, marketing manager of Primar Stavanger, pointed out that, for all the talk of seafarers having accidents because they look at their screens rather than look out of the window, there have been several accidents caused by the opposite problem. "In Norway we had a navigator who stuck his neck out, when he had the equipment onboard he didn't use it," he said. "He crashed into a rock." George Hoyt, CEO of seafarer information service Newslink Services, said that 90 per cent of collision accidents are preventable. "There needs to be a safety culture in the company," he said. Newslink Services is planning to evolve into a research vehicle to get information from seafarers about shipboard equipment and deliver it back to the equipment manufacturers so they know exactly how well it performs at sea, he said. There was an interesting discussion about using computers for collision avoidance, or to help seafarers make decisions about avoiding collisions. Dr Andy Norris, chairman, said he was involved in designing a collision avoidance system, which advised seafarers into how to follow the IMO collision regulations. "The IMO collision regulations are readily understood by machine," he said. "It's like having a seafarer standing behind you, which says, 'I would have done this,'" he says. Andrew Craig Bennett pointed out that in most collisions, people are not obeying the regulations. He also pointed out that collision regulations were designed for sailing ships and badly need to be update4d. Mr Craig-Bennett said that almost all ships on order now have some kind of ECDIS / electronic chart system on the bridge, since it costs so little to fit compared to the price of the ship. But most of the ships are not using them. SUBHEAD John Muldowney, C-MAP John Muldowney, commercial sales manager with C-MAP UK, talked about electronic chart delivery and updating to ships. Many oil companies want to see proof that a shipping company has the most up to date charts as part of their vetting inspections, he said. He recommended that shipping companies use the C-MAP proprietary CM93 format for charts, rather than the standard S57 data; the C-MAP format is compressed to 7 per cent of the size of the S57 file and much easier to load onto an ECDIS, he said. MAIN HEAD Maritime security - day two One day two, we reviewed the latest maritime security threat and how technology can help make ships more secure, also reviewing the incoming long range tracking legislation, ship security alerts, electric fences and closed circuit TV. SUBHEAD Bob Haddow, Drum Cussac Maritime Bob Haddow, consultant with Drum Cussac Maritime, said that airport security is much superior to maritime security, due to numerous terrorist incidents with aviation and loss of life. "Do we want the maritime industry to go down the same route or learn the lessons now," he asked. "Remember airport security is superior because of lessons learned," he said. "Heed the lesson and don't let it happen to the maritime industry. I think that before any ships are being built you've got to get security from the world go. "The piracy threat and stowaways is the major problem at the moment," he said. "If anything there is an increased threat." Mr Haddow said he was "amazed" that the maritime industry has got off so lightly with no major terrorist incidents so far. "But I do think that the maritime industry is just around the corner. The threat has just increased," he said. "Terrorists are clever, they have time to do what they are doing to do," he said. "Terrorist objectives are attention, acknowledgement and recognition. "Al Q'aida- everybody knows who they are. They've got a worldwide reputation." "Terrorists are very adaptable. They can change. Who's to say the next objective isn't a major liner." Mr Haddow commended the ISPS code, which, he said, was good at dealing with piracy and stowaways, not just terrorism. "We've had people saying the ISPS code is just against terrorism," he said. "I personally don't agree with that." "The ISPS code lays down the fundamentals of good security. It will not stop terrorism it will make it more difficult. I do think that the code passes significant requirements." "It does depend on the contracting government policy and that's put sufficient resources into the ISPS." "The ISPS code lays down the fundamentals of good security - on the ship," he said. "Control visitors to the ship, have ship security patrols, have restricted areas of the ship with restricted access. Have additional radar watches." Mr Haddow criticised some shipping companies who are keen to get their ship security certificate at the ultimate minimum cost. "I think that penny pinching now will lose in the long term," he says. An outstanding question is, if an incident actually occurs, what sorts of emergency response will there be? Mr Haddow suggested that night-lights should be shining on the water, rather than the side of the ship, to make it easier to spot infiltrators. SUBHEAD Chris Ellison, MUSC Commodore Chris Ellison, with Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants, said it was lucky that the maritime industry has not been hit so far. "We don't have any real answers why," he said. "Its all to do with the terrorist mind. The terrorist probably realises, how can we make the maximum noise when we make it. I don't think the opportunity has occurred at the moment." "I think that when we 've brought in the ISPS code and the processes are good, then people get complacent and sloppy with it, that's when we'll be hit," he said. "It'll be a massive picture book trick on a par with 9-11." "There will be a large gathering of cruise ships in Piraeus for the Olympics. It will be something along those lines." MUSC has 14 salaried employees, mainly ex special forces, with association with over 60 specialist consultants. It has trained over 1500 company security officers and ship security officers to date, as required under the ISPS code. The company has recently been engaged doing most of the port security assessments in Belgium. "A lot of players are Johnny come lately in ISPS approval," he said. Mr Ellison questioned the motives by several organisations in improving security, with keeping business going taking precedence over all other factors. "I went to a [undisclosed rail operator] - the sole thought was, will this stop the [rail] operation," he said. "The answer - if it doesn't stop the [rail] operating it takes a low priority. The same thing goes for lots of shipping people." Mr Ellison talked about how ISPS is just one factor in improving shipping security, with the next being improving the supply chain. Shipping companies would be advised to look at the routings they use; by keeping the vessel over 50 nautical miles off shore they put it out of the range of most pirates. They should have a security citadel encompassing critical areas, use barrier electrification (electric fences), use lighting, CCTV, access control, alarm systems, fire hoses and tin tacks (since most pirates are barefoot). Mr Ellison said he thought automatic identification systems would be a contribution to shipping security, in particular helping authorities track where ships have been. "Anything like AIS has to be a good thing," he said. "One of the things the international shipping industry has had is commercial secrecy." SUBHEAD Peter Kidman, LISCR Peter Kidman, general manager of the London office, Liberian and International Ship Registry, talked about LISCR's work to make an international identity card and database of seafarers. There are around 1900 vessels flagged with Liberia, with 500,000 seafarers on the organisation's books. It processes 50,000 new seafarer applications every year. The identity card scheme is a means to reduce fraud, making sure that seafarers are who they say they are, and have the right skills and certificates to do their job. The card identifies a seafarer, records his sea service and his evidence of qualifications. Mr Kidman said he thought port state control is an "extremely important policeman for shipping." The LISCR identify card uses a fingerprint template. It does not record the actual details of the fingerprint but the positions of specific bend points in the lines, which can be used to reliably identify the person but without using up too much data. The data is stored as a code which is printed on the card; it is not a magnetic strip. LISCR is currently trailing the scheme, it is not yet implemented. "There is a huge political will to move these standards forward," he said. SUBHEAD Will Attfield, Simrad Will Attfield, commercial manager, systems and projects group, Kongsberg Simrad, talked about his trials with a closed circuit TV camera onboard bulk carrier Elbe Ore. Since the bulk carrier Derbyshire was lost in 1980, 350 similar vessels have been lost, he said. "That's an astonishing number." "If that can be reduced in any possible way by the use of video then that's great," he said. The camera is fitted to the stern of the ship, and connected to a screen in the bridge by fibre optic cable (it is too far away to use a normal television cable). Mr Attfield recommended that seafarers should watch the screen during heavy weather. There are issues with losing night vision if the screen is on in the night time, he said; one company he worked with put curtains in front of the monitor so they could see the screen at any time but it did not make the room any more light. The cost of a system is around the same as a radar, he said. SUBHEAD Raphael Kahn, Secure Ship Raphael Kahn talked about his electronic fence system for ships, wrapping the vessel up in a 9000v electric fence. Pirates trying to climb the ship will hit the fence, which will stun but not kill them since it is a low current. The fence overhangs the side of the ship, and there are three separate strong wires, so it is very difficult to cut. Even if pirates did succeed in cutting it would set off an alarm. The system costs around $25,000 per ship and can be fit by seafarers. The voltage can be optionally reduced to 12 volts during the daytime, so that it still sounds an alarm if anyone cuts a wire but is possibly more practical or comfortable for seafarers. Mr Kahn has served in the Israeli Navy, with tasks including catching terrorist ships and finding illegal immigrants. "Terrorism is psychological warfare although the results are very physical," he said. "It aims to disrupt everyday life and a country's ability to function." "The old terrorist mindset was to drive public opinion to pressure demand," he said. "With new terrorism the end goal is a conversion to Islam." Mr Kahn suggested that the media should be more responsible in it's recording of terrorist incidents, since the main intention of the terrorism is to attract attention. If there were no media attention, then there would be no point to terrorism. SUBHEAD Brian Mullan, Inmarsat Brian Mullan, general manager of maritime and aeronautical safety services, Inmarsat, talked about developments with incoming legislation for long-range tracking and ship alert systems. There is still a large amount of discussion, he said, about who should receive a ship alert; Japan, for example, is now reported to be saying that ship security alerts can only be delivered to the shipowner. A ship alert can use the P3 distress protocol on Inmarsat, so there is no charge for it. It takes top priority. Modifications are being made on the land earth stations to handle this. Mr Mullan questioned the sense of people using coded messages to indicate that the ship is under attack - if pirates hijack the ship it seems unlikely that any officer would get a chance to make a phone call. However a coded message system could be good sense as a means of verifying if there is a real alert or the button has been pressed by accident. The shipping company receiving the alert can phone the ship with a coded message. There is still some misunderstanding in the industry about when ship security alert systems need to be installed, he said. The criteria are that they must be fitted by the 1st radio security survey after 1st July 2004, and ships have radio security surveys every year. Mr Mullan said that the United States is reported to be looking for ways to track all vessels 2000 miles off its coastline; legislation is being pushed through the International Maritime Organisation. Long range tracking legislation will probably be implemented globally earlier than 2006, maybe as early as 2004. "I wouldn't be surprised to see an early paper [submitted to IMO] in Feb 2004 on long range tracking," he said. The legislation is likely to enable flag states to track any ships under their flags anywhere in the world, and port states to be able to track a vessel as soon as it announces its intention to come to port in that state. The communication cost for the satellite tracking report will be paid by the flag state administration or port state. SUBHEAD Julian Longson, Pole Star Julian Longson, VP Business Development, Pole Star Space Applications Limited, talked about the "absolute chaos" in the market at the moment with so many manufacturers of ship security alert systems. "There's a lot of cowboys in the market," he said. Mr Longson advised customers to look at the reasons the different manufacturers are in the industry - if they are out to make a quick buck out of the legislation, or if they have a long-term commitment to making ship tracking devices, as Pole Star does, one of the very few companies to be making ship tracking devices before 9-11. Although type approval and wheelmarks are not required for ship security alerts, Pole Star has still sought it anyway, and now has the approval of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Authority. "I challenge all the other manufacturers to bring their products up to this level," he said. The Pole Star system will alert automatically if somebody cuts the power / communication cables with it. SUBHEAD Roger Ringstad, Seagull Roger Ringstad, managing director of computer based training company Seagull, talked about his software to train seafarers to use the ISPS code. Companies with 1900 vessels are already using the Seagull security training software, he said, and it is installed onboard 940 vessels. Mr Ringstad pointed out that the IMO ship security officer course if developed for a classroom environment, not e-learning. Mr Ringstad said that Bergesen, one of Seagull's customers, would have spent $2,900 per vessel on security training sending its officers to a standard 4 day course in a classroom, with training given to 4 officers per vessel. The total training cost for Bergesen would be $250,000 per year or $2,900 per vessel. By using Seagull software onboard the cost drops to $1,000 per vessel, a saving of $1,900 per vessel. Another big Seagull customer is Teekay, which normally pays $300 to $2,000 for a shore training course. By using Seagull shipboard software, it pays $258 for 3 computer based training modules and $205 for each ship security certificate (per person). SUBEAD Trevor Whitworth, Telaurus Trevor Whitworth, senior VP sales and marketing, Telaurus, talked about his software tool to send the required arrival notification information from the ship to the US Coastguard. "A ship approaching a port has to advise about is ship security certificate and under what administration it has been issued," he said. "It has to inform the current level of security and provide information about charterers." "The ship security officer needs to talk to the port security officer 'as soon as possible,'" he said. The Telaurus software provides forms which the seafarer can fill in - the software then only transmits the relevant information, Telaurus then sends the completed form onto the government authority, with a typical total cost of just $1.29 per report for the ship shore communications. So far, Telaurus has not encountered any government agencies refusing to accept the form sent in this way, he said. SUBHEAD Jimmy Millard, 2-Track Jimmy Millard talked about his new company 2-Track, which is geared around providing end-to-end container tracking systems for containers, working together with Hanjin Shipping. The company is described as an "Anglo-Korean venture" and uses the Orbcomm satellite communications system, probably the only remaining company active in the maritime sector to be doing so. The ship's bridge is fitted with a LESO satellite modem to talk to the satellite, a GPS antenna to know where it is, and a radio scanner. All of the containers are fitted with sensors and radio transmitting devices, so they can send data to the unit on the bridge describing the operating conditions of the containers (temperature, door open, humidity). As an extension to the system, seafarers can carry ship security alert keyfobs - if anything happens they can press a button, which sends a single to the system on the bridge, which triggers the ship security alert. The containers send data every 2 hours when they are full and every 12 hours when they are empty. DAY THREE: Improving efficiency in ship operations Day three of Digital Ship London looked at the challenges of integrating the different systems together. The hard thing about integration is that it requires that either the market chooses a single standard or that the suppliers sit down together and figure out how to link their systems together. SUBHEAD Neil Tomlinn, ShipNet Neil Tomlinn, director of ShipNet, talked about the evolution of his company, providing services to integrate together different players in the shipping chain, including agents and brokers. ShipNet is moving away from the liner shipping industry, he says; the task of integrating the systems was very difficult to make money out of, and although there is an EDIFACT standard, the deviations from the standard make it more difficult than if there was never a standard in the first place. "We got our fingers burnt in the liner industry," he said. The definition of a standard is a common consensus, he said, or general agreement in the ways that things should be done, not necessarily everyone using the exact same electronic communications format. ShipNet is trying to position itself in the industry as an integrator, something which is very difficult to do. "Interfacing is a challenge - it doesn't really provide any specific person with any value," he said. "We want to work together with every shipping company and technology supplier," he said. Mr Tomlinn said that MTML had been a very successful electronic communications standard on maritime purchasing - on the liner shipping side the EDIFACT system had not been so successful due to the variations. Mr Tomlinn said he thought that technology was best served by competition - so that the best technology wins. "I think that ShipServ TradeNet has been very successful," he said. "They have basically taken over a lot of competition. Supplies can use ShipServ through different interfaces." ShipNet is holding a user event in April next year, where 350 of its customers will be invited. He said he was willing to discuss with other technology providers the possibility of them addressing ShipNet's customers at the user event. SUBHEAD Mickey Watzak, Maritime Bridge Mickey Watzak, CEO of Houston based Maritime Bridge, talked about how his software works as a kind of "digital nervous system" for ship agents, owners, inspectors and oil companies (charterers) in the Houston area, connecting to websites and sending messages to cellphones. The system enables people to react quickly to urgent information and ultimately reduce the amount of time taken for port calls. "If you can save your client 2 hours on each port call you can save a lot over the year," he said. "An agent is relied upon to give quick and reliable information to the charterer," he said. "Agents and owners have to provide increased information to port state control." "Each maritime company has their own unique requirements and interfaces." SUBHEAD Johan Pellas, Wärtsilä Johan Pellas, from the condition based monitoring team of ship engine power supplier Wärtsilä, talked about the remote condition based monitoring system Wärtsilä has set up Finland, monitoring a number of ship engines remotely. "We expect almost 50 marine installations by the end of the year," he said. "We'll double the number of operations." A shipboard software package, taking data from the ship engines either keyed in by seafarers or taken directly from sensors, prepares a daily 30 kb data package describing the performance of the engine, which can be sent to Wärtsilä for just $1 to $2. The Wärtsilä engineers can check everything is going well, or make recommendations for maintenance / checks which might be able to make big reductions in fuel pumps. Eg "something is wrong with your injector pump". Once the engines are wired up, with an always-on connection to shore it is completely possible to start and stop ship engines from Finland, although probably not particularly practical. If the engine is electronically controlled, it can even be possible to do limited remote maintenance on the engine managed from Finland rather than on the ship itself. Wärtsilä also has an agreement with Xantic to connect its system to the AMOS shipboard maintenance management software. Mr Pellas noted that there are many industry trends which lead to remote monitoring of ship engines. This includes: seafarers spending less time at sea and getting less experienced with the engines; seafarers having less time to fix the engines at sea; crews getting smaller; and engines getting more complicated. However he said that some shipowners are completely against the idea of monitoring ship engines from shore. "They think that the chief engineer should do this. It should be part of their job," he said. SUBHEAD Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, AMMITEC Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of the Association of Maritime Managers of Information Technology and Communications, talked about his new association, formally incorporated in September this year. AMMITEC's role in the industry is intended to be to promote the "correct" (i.e. good) use of ICT in shipping companies and enhance the status of ICT in shipping. "Its a forum for exchange of ideas," he said. Only individuals can join AMMITEC, not companies; this is because AMMITEC does not want its agenda driven by company agendas. However to be a full member you must be in a management position looking after IT at a shipping company, ship agent or shipbroker. "Shipping in my personal view is a bit old fashioned, it has tremendous needs to improve efficiencies," he said. AMMITEC has decided to "heavily promote" Fleet 77, and other technologies which can lead to faster and cheaper ship-shore data connections. It would also like to see either consolidation in the maritime software industry or more integration between the players. "There are hundreds of software suppliers. Each has its own standard," he said. SUBHEAD P&O Nedlloyd and Fleet Iwan Banens of Xantic talked about the company's work to migrate P&O Nedlloyd from Inmarsat -A to Inmarsat Fleet on 28 of its container ships. P&O Nedlloyd was looking for an alternative to Inmarsat -A on 28 of its vessels, which is expensive and being phased out in 2007. Xantic put together a program which involved lease of the equipment, installation and communications costs in a single bill. It calculated that migrating to Inmarsat Fleet would pay off in under 24 months. P&O Nedlloyd wanted to convert the equipment from -A to Fleet themselves; the project of 28 migrations took under 6 months. Having fitted Inmarsat Fleet, the company still found that its ISDN service suited the company's needs the most, rather than the MPDS. However it is investing in a number of software solutions which take advantage of the system, including the SPOS shipboard weather routing system and Digitrace electronic chart updates. Mr Banens said that now Inmarsat Fleet had been in the marketplace for over 18 months, and nobody had heard any horror stories about it not working, it was time for the maritime industry to embrace it much more as a tried and tested solution. SUBHEAD Christian Kock, Thrane and Thrane Christian Kock, maritime technical pre-sales manager with Thrane and Thrane, who was also involved in the project, said that the biggest task was pulling down the Inmarsat -A terminals. Thrane has shipped more than 800 Inmarsat Fleet systems to date. Mr Kock noted that the market trends is that the more money the customer has, the bigger satellite antenna he wants. So superyacht owners want Fleet 77 antennas but shipping companies want Fleet 33s. Thrane and Thrane is trying to work out which equipment works best with Fleet equipment; the biggest problems it has had so far are with CISCO routers. "CISCO designed very good routers, but you need to work with CISCO if you want to set it up especially if you want to use the serial port," he said. "I spent 3 months working together with CISCO to try to solve the problem." SUBHEAD Adrian MacAllister, Stratos Adrian MacAllister head of product development with Stratos, said he thought that shipping companies using Fleet were not taking enough advantage of the MPDS service or appreciating the benefits of it. "Instant messaging is absurdly cheap over MPDS," he said. With most large companies having state of the art IT departments, they can do a great deal to remotely look after shipboard computers by communicating with them using MPDS. They can use MPDS for remote updating for small updates, eg virus definitions and small windows updates. "A simple test of MPDS - create a new user in control panel over the satellite," he said. "The vessel is just a node in the network." "Registry audit is a good idea - keeping control of the software on ships," he said. Shipping companies need to be very careful about viruses on shipboard computers; they can take over a PC and start pumping out data onto the network; this is very expensive if the network involves an Inmarsat Fleet connection. Shipping companies can monitor the websites that seafarers use by requiring them to log onto the internet via the company intranet. "Don't be embarrassed about internet access monitoring - its just common sense," he said. SUBHEAD Adam Webster, Marconi Selenia Adam Webster with Marconi Selenia gave some good commonsense advise for running shipboard computer systems. With any computer networks requiring over 100m of cable, you should use fibre optic cables, rather than normal Ethernet cables, he said, because they degrade less over distance. The biggest problems with shipboard computer networks is interruption of the power supply, he said. Ships should install an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to get around this problem, he said. Ships should avoid using wireless networks, including bluetooth and infrared, because it is too easy to hack into the system when the ship comes into port; for example, by another vessel calling alongside with the same wireless computer system onboard. 90 per cent of all shipboard software problems can be repaired by telephone calls, he said. Shipping companies should aim to keep a spare monitor, preloaded hard-drive, floppy drive, CD drive, ribbon cable and network patch leads onboard. He recommended using the Raid 1 + 2 system, which saves everything on two hard disks rather than just one. This means that if one hard disk fails, everything is still there on the other one. They should also consider ghosting, where you take an "image" of the PC operating system, which enables another computer to be set up quickly in exactly the same way. The weakest link in any ship-shore computer network is the communications component, he said; shipping companies should consider carrying alternatives, for example a GSM phone. Shipping companies should also consider keeping a whole spare computer onboard; however they should be very careful. "I put a spare computer onboard one ship and the captain nicked it for his own personal use," he said. "He was using it as a standalone computer and put all his personal files on it. He was very embarrassed when we took it out and connected it to the network and everybody could see his files." Mr Webster suggested that as a good maintenance program, IT managers should check computers every month for antivirus and firewall (Windows) updates, and loading of unofficial software. Every 6 months they should check the UPS calibration, check the use of e-mail, and clean the back and fan of the workstations because they can get very clogged with all of the dust onboard ships. Every 3 years they should replace the UPS batteries and the computer hard drives; computer hard drives tend to fail after 4 years anyway, so by replacing it after 3 years you can save the problems of it suddenly failing. SUBHEAD Alan Leach, Globe Wireless Alan Leach, general manager Europe, Globe Wireless, predicted that the coming privatisation of Inmarsat is a big driver for change in the maritime communications industry. "I predict that it will have a big impact on the market structure," he said. "Inmarsat is considered keen to position itself as a telecom company. Does this mean a dilution of interest away from the maritime industry? There could be consolidation in satcoms." "Will Inmarsat get more engaged with its customers, or continue to work with retailers?" he asked. "There could be just 2 major LESOs next year," he said, speculating that there could be consolidation among the current big four (France Telecom, Xantic, Telenor and Stratos). Mr Leach speculated that Inmarsat might be in the market for a land earth station operator, when its commitment not to sell directly to end-users expires next year. Mr Leach pointed out that Inmarsat earns about 60 per cent of its revenues from the maritime industry; Iridium earns 25 per cent and Globe Wireless earns 100 per cent. There are many customer advantages to dealing directly with the company which controls the communications network, as Globe Wireless does with its HF radio communications network. "The customer wants the ability to monitor and control communication, consolidated billing, global physical support, redundancy," he said. SUBHEAD Pål Jensen, Telenor Sealink Pål Jensen, managing director of Telenor Sealink, talked about developments at the company to build its VSAT offering to the maritime industry. The company is planning 2 fixed priced maritime VSAT services, with the price including equipment lease and installation. For $2,500 a year it will offer a regional (single satellite) service, covering 512 kbps receive, 28.8 kbps send, 2 phone lines and internet connection. For $4,500 a year it will offer a global C band VSAT service, with the same data rates. Shipping companies will be asked to sign a 5-year contract for this service, although Telenor has made 1-year contracts for VSAT services in the past. Both services will be fully operated and fully managed. Telenor currently supplies VSAT services to around 100 ferry and cruise vessels, including Silja Lines, Stena and P+O Ferries. Some of these vessels are always under GSM coverage but they want VSAT to have a faster and always on connection. A recent installation completed was 27 Stena Line vessels. It has installed VSAT terminals on 35 ships on 19 routes. Stena uses the system to co-ordinate maintenance with its various suppliers and allow customers to use the internet, among other purposes. The vessels have GSM quality communications from the ship. Customers can use their GSM phones onboard, connecting to shore via the satellite network. SUBHEAD Steve Harding, 3gmarine Maritime wi-fi consultant Steve Harding talked about the wireless data communications standards and which ones might be suitable for shipping. There is currently a battle going on between the different standards and very little compatibility between them, he said. The main standards at the moment are 802.11, 802.15 and 802.16, he said. Of these, 802.11 is developed for mainly office use and used to provide internet access in Starbucks. The equipment is cheap and widely supplied by Nokia. The data can carry 20 miles. Although the system is already proving very popular, there can be problems with data interference; there are also limits to capacity (the number of people who can communicate using the protocol at the same time); it is already reaching "crunch point" in certain areas, he said. The equipment cannot automatically change frequency if data communication at one frequency is overloaded, he said. 802.15 was developed for industrial applications, with data rates of 250 kbps, 40 kbps or 20 kbps. The system is more reliable than 802.11, and easier to scale to thousands of nodes; it is self-healing, the systems can automatically solve problems with transmission. 802.16 can carry 70 mpbs at up to 30 miles but uses large amounts of power. It was intended for carrying data from city to city. A company called Skylink wants to float helium balloons over large cities, enabling data exchange between people in the city using this standard, he said. Mr Harding recommended 802.15 networks onboard ships, because it is the most solid and reliable system. It can be used for security applications, carrying data from closed circuit TV cameras, monitoring containers and tracking personnel. 802.16 is probably the best standard for vessel traffic applications in ports, enabling pilots on ships to see all ship positions on their electronic chart displays without relying on the ship system. Although one 802.16 system can only reach 30 miles it is possible to mesh systems together with repeaters (eg so the data from one transmitter is picked up 30 miles away and boosted and sent on). This would mean that enormous data networks could be created going many miles out to sea.