MAIN HEAD Digital Ship Scandinavia report DECK HEAD Key performance indicators for the cost of software, simplifying electronic charts, how much satcoms does a shipping company need - some of the knotty issues discussed at Digital Ship Scandinavia in Oslo April 29-30 BODY Eivind Klewe, manager of Information Services (IS) for shipping company Iverships, compared running the IT in a shipping company to running the lighting in a theatre. "They don't see you if it works, and if it doesn't work then it's a disaster whatever happens," he said. Mr Klewe asked if any other shipping IT managers were interested in sharing information with Iverships about the amount of money they are spending on IT and satcoms ("benchmarking"), so everybody has an idea if they are over or under spending. "I'm looking for people willing to benchmark against us to see if we are doing things properly." "We have so many IT managers here. I would very much like to see if we can find a way of benchmarking costs so we can share it in an open way. If we can take 6 people today I would be very happy with that." Iverships is currently reviewing how its expenditure on IT matches against the reward. "There has been focus on trying to control IT costs," he said. "The question is - are we doing the right thing for the right costs. This means better than the competition." Iverships follows similar processes in other areas of its business, for example measuring how well it meets the Laycan (expected time the ship will be in port). "What is also important is to set new goals all the time and realistic targets," he said. "We can see - we have reached the goal, or whether the trend is going in the right direction." "We have a set of KPIs [key performance indicators] showing that we are doing the right changes in the organisation - learning and growth." "We ask people if we are doing the right thing," he said. "It helps to improve the internal ways of working." "It is important to find a structure," he said. "It is important to visualise improvement - I think the only way we can do that is to dig up hard facts. You can show them how you are improving." "Gardner have a way of looking at this, what they call total cost of ownership," he said. "I think it is very important to look the benefit of ownership," he added. "You have to look it - is there a lack of benefit in what you do - is it being used." Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC, agreed that creating a base for companies to share information about costs would be a useful project for AMMITEC members. "The data would be shared by the companies that participate," he said. "We did a study at Stelmar with 2 other shipping companies and the results were very revealing. Managers made decisions made on this benchmark." SUBHEAD Samos Steamship Aris Iglessis, IT manager with Samos Steamship, presented his vision for how IT could help reduce the number of seafarers required onboard vessels. "Lets dream - we have a control room, with a master, engineer and communications officer on shore - they can see everything the vessel can see," he said. "They will communicate with the master / chief engineer on the vessel." "Is it just a dream? I don't know. Jules Verne's flight to the moon was not - Dolly the sheep was real." "I don't see it as a matter of saving money", he said. "The point is- we don't have people to go onboard the vessels. We have lower educated people to go on vessels all the time. You cannot train everybody. Nowadays it is not at the level it was at a few years ago." "We will have systems to monitor the vessels, everything happening on the vessels. The workload from the ship will go to the office." "Maintenance will not be by the crew but mainly by shipyards and shore people that can maintain the vessel in a very short period of time. "We will need shore gangs to help the existing crew to manoeuvre the vessel." "There will be low manned vessels. You need a very small crew, very well educated, very well trained. If you have 5 persons onboard they won't be able to stay for very long periods of time." "One would have to work very hard to keep the level of safety that we need," he said. "This will work with double systems - everything will be centralised. On planes we have double systems - the pilots are there to check the systems are working." "The people onboard will do the first troubleshooting if a system fails," he said. "The people that will go onboard the vessel will need a higher education level than we have now. The group will always be together on the vessel." "We will have people onboard that need a different training. Sometimes people on the vessel don't use the data they have. You need highly educated people." "I think that in future we will need data communication more than ever before," he said. "In order to achieve this we need high speed data to monitor all the systems onboard. They will need communications for training and also for entertainment. SUBHEAD Barber, Barwil and BASS Helge Mothes, chief information officer with Wilh Wilhelmsen, parent of Barber Shipmanagement, ship agency network Barwil and maritime software company BASS (also Wallenius Lines and EUKOR car carriers) spoke about the challenges ship managers face and how technology might help. "The challenge for us is how we can improve the management about what we do and pay back the investments in our daily work," he said. "Our business challenges are to gain a better overview of current business process and performance; increase productivity; work smarter and reduce costs; develop best practises for whole fleet; prevent accidents and undesired events. "Also improve data quality, establish closer collaboration with customers, agents /partners, seafarers, and prevent accidents and undesired events." Talking about the shipmanagement market as a whole, Mr Mothes said that 25 per cent of the world shipping fleet is under third party management, but the shipmanagement business is growing at 4 per cent a year. Despite the cyclicity of the shipping market, shipmanagement fees are staying fairly constant, he said. "How is this [shipmanagement] market going to develop? We need to come up with solutions - better products, enable more of these vessels to be in 3rd party management," he said. "Shipowners don't come running to us and give us good ideas." Mr Mothes said that many of the traditional roles of the shipmaster, such as handling crew recruitment, negotiations with charterers and supervising cargo loading operations, have since been re-allocated. "Changing ways of working that have happened for several hundred years is extremely difficult," he said. "This is not a very modern business." SUBHEAD Barber's customers Barber analysed what kind of business its employees thought it was, and what kind of business its customers thought it was, and was surprised at the results. "We got feedback from 220 customers - we asked them how do you look at our company and what should we do." "Employees regard us as more mature with customer relationship management than the customers perceive us to be," he said. GET MORE FROM SLIDES. "We need to go from being very operation focussed to being very customer focussed." "Our customers would like similar services from wherever the vessels are managed," he said. A big challenge for Barber is working out how it is adding value to its shipowners - do they want to use 3rd party managers because they can provide better crew or run the vessels at lower costs, he said. "I think we are moving ahead - we are a product of how much trust we can get from our customers," he said. As ship managers, Barber does not have complete control of the IT systems onboard the vessels it looks after. However all the ships it manages have ship-shore e-mail capability, he said. SUBHEAD BASS and Barber Mr Mothes talked about the reporting tools with BASS, the software company which is also part of the Wilh Wilhelmsen Group. Barber sells its software (BASS) as a stand-alone service, or sells it as an additional service to its shipmanagement customers. "We can take out different reports - operational data. Budget deviation, financial data," he said. "There is a management dashboard - safety management, operations delays. All the information is available to customers." "Since it is available, we know it is there. But we don't necessarily use it that much." "We have a very good value out of the BASS suite of products," he said. Mr Mothes said that it might be possible in future to look at ship operations software as a kind of commodity. "There should be a common way to do it," he said. "If we could share the cost effort of developing software with others that would be a good place to start." SUBHEAD Barber's Shaj Thayil Shaj Thayil, general manager of the Indian office of Barber Shipmanagement, said "Shipmanagement is alleviating the need for shipowners to look after the day to day operation of vessels." "We have a growing size and increased complexity of ships. Lower management fees, globalisation of trade." "We need software systems that meet ship manager's specific needs. How do we exceed customer's expectations." Mr Thayil spoke about a recent development from BASS is a "dashboard" system that puts all the information a user might want onto a single screen. "You have one place that handles your entire planning," he said. "It includes Purplefinder." "Ship managers can gain a better overview of current business processes. Accurate and real time information. Proactive approach. Global administration. Document control. Regulation conformity. "It doesn't depend on the individuals' memory." Mr Thayil stressed the importance of support for information technology across the whole company. "Unless change processes are driven across the organisation there's no way anyone will help you," he said. SUBHEAD Broström Per-Erik Holmberg, IT manager of Swedish shipping company Broström, talked about his company's process to develop its shipboard software and communications. Broström has some ships it manages but does not handle commercial operations for - and others it handles commercial operations for but not the management. This means there can be two separate shipboard configurations, one for communications with the manager and one for communications with the operator. "I am describing the process that we started - we haven't finished," he said. "We are putting a lot of applications onboard from e-mail to commercial applications. Shipboard management - planned maintenance, CBT." "You see good examples of shipmanagers harmonising their fleets," he said. "We use ShipNet's maritime workstation for vessel reporting." "We try to use best of breed - Consultas, DocMap [for document management]. " Then vessel reporting - we used ShipNet." "There's a lot of one stop shop suppliers out there today. The question is which one to go to." "If you put together the best of breed [the best software for each specific application] you are not dependent on one company's development cycle, no lock down." "If you stick with one supplier there is less training, an easier graphical user interface - one person to talk to." Broström decided to take the best of breed route. "So far the integration challenges of best of breed software have been pretty straightforward," he said. Broström has also standardised the IT configurations of all the ships in its fleet. "In 2000 we had vessel management software we had 24 different configurations of IT systems," he said. "To take care we had an IT infrastructure - satellite and GSM communication box, software. We shipped it out to the vessels." "So they have one system to work with Broström, one to work with their ShipManager." "Broström has a project to connect the vessels to the office," he said. "We use VIRTEK COMMBOX connecting mail server." "We can do remote support of vessels [through COMMBOX], it actually works." "All communication goes through the office infrastructure." SUBHEAD Viruses Tassos Makris, IS director of shipping company Gourdomichalis, talked about the challenges of keeping viruses off ships. "The problem updating vessels is that most virus update files are 1-3 MB," he said. "This takes a long time using mini-M at 2.4 kbps." "Some antivirus programs cannot detect variants of a virus," he said. "IT managers must make very informed choices," he said. "We have to make sure the e-mail providers use anti-virus software on their services. "They should not use CDs or floppy disks from friends, magazines." "We have to equip the vessels with software to do virus clean up for FAT, FAT 32 and NTFS partitions." "Someone onboard should know how to do a format and re-install everything," he said. "This is the worst scenario." Mr Makris asked if it might be possible for the virus definition update files to be organised differently, so that the file sizes were smaller. Kurt Roar Wilhelmsen of maritime software company UniSea responded that his company had managed to do incremental updates of virus definitions so it was only sending 20kb to the ship a day. "In the companies that I know at least once a week a shipboard computer crashes due to a virus," said Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC. SUBHEAD IT in newbuildings Mike Kennedy, technical manager of Hellespont, talked about how information technology can be used when building new ships, such as the four ultra large crude carriers (ULCCs) built by Hellespont at Daewoo in South Korea. "You have to negotiate from wherever the yard wants you to negotiate from. We had one yard that insisted on us touring yards in South Korea. "A lot of people say, we have to have a guy in charge [of newbuildings]," he said. "But is hard to have one guy minutely responsible for everything - its not fair and not cost effective." "In the yard there are zillions of inspectors and little mini-negotiations going on all the time," he said. "Communications are key." "You have to keep track of everything you say. It can and will be held against you. You have to send it back to the office and get someone to check it." "Get yard drawings - I recommend CAD/CAM," he said. ""You need dongles, all these programs are proprietary." "Scan everything that moves - paper is bad. You never lose it, even if you find it hard to find. And its portable. You have to file it and be able to file it again." "You hear things like reasonable, class says its OK, optimise. Those of us in the business know what these words mean." "Once you're in the yard the focus has got to be on communications with the office. In the office you'll be checking the detailed design. With communication you can use all the expertise in your company." "Ships are made of large Lego blocks these days - 250 to 300. Each averages 10 inspections each," he said. "You have to track it, its very tedious." Information technology helps people all over the world work together. "We needed to send people out with laptops to engine manufacturers," he said. "You need good comms, digital photography. A big disk on the laptop." "Sea trials are very high pressure time. You have 100 people on a ship designed for 30 people. It goes 24 hours a day and everyone is dead." "You've got to catch the mistakes, make the complaints, get the specs you fought over at the beginning of the contract. Add to the list of non-conformities daily." "Happily you can use the satcom if it got onboard on time." "If you're building a sister ship, the sister ship should be synching with the site office." "Broadband is a necessity [for terrestrial communications]. We had 3/4 computers synched with computers in Greece." "You need a good data security tool." SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS SUBHEAD EMS Satcom Gregor Ross, consultant with EMS Satcom, talked about the trials the company has made with V.Ships to monitor the cost savings that could be achieved using a Fleet 55 terminal in MPDS, with the same data communications pattern. The result of the trial was that V.Ships saved 67 per cent of its communications costs on Fleet 55. "Neil Sayce, communications manager with V.Ships says China Pride is the cheapest ship in the fleet," Mr Ross said. EMS Satcom also calculated that Fleet 55 MPDS was 87 per cent cheaper than Mini-M for data communications with the same real life communications pattern, since mini-M was not designed to carry data. Mr Ross said that there would be no difference between the costs of Fleet 55 and Fleet 77 for MPDS; however the packet data service on Fleet 33 works in a different way. "MPDS is by far the cheapest alternative," he said. Mr Ross said that all the discussions about which file size is better to send by MPDS and which is best by dial-up are largely academic, because on dial up the computer systems never use the maximum capacity of data transmission available. "I've heard about cut-offs of 10kb and 1mb - they are probably both right," he said. "With any dialup there is a dead time. How do you control how long the master actually connects if he's on e-mail." SUBHEAD Telemar Scandinavia Lars Brodje, managing director of Telemar Scandinavia, talked about his system which sends data to ships at broadband speeds, using satellites put in the sky for television and other purposes. "The satellite capacity has increased a great deal since 1991. There is a lot of satellite capacity out there to be used for different services," he said. The high bandwidth data can only go from the satellite to the ship, not the other direction, and the coverage area is limited. However the service can be very cheap (Eur 125 a month for complete European coverage with unlimited bandwidth). Many of the satellites already broadcast TV, such as HOTBIRD 4 carrying over 1000 TV channels. "It's becoming a fair requirement to give seafarers TV where there is TV available," he said. "It could be used to send newspapers, virus updates," he said. "Anything bulky and big." The only equipment required is a satellite dish and PCI card in the computer. "We have Norwegian fishing vessels using this solution," he said. "They have e-mail boxes being emptied out without the vessel needing to empty the mailbox." The Telemar group is owned by Italian shipowners; it was originally established in 1947 to manage radio telecommunications on Italian ships. In 2002 Telemar Scandinavia purchased the mobile satellite businesses of Telia in Sweden and the corresponding operations of Sonera in Finland. It also looks after technical operation and maintenance of the Swedish national radio and surveillance networks. It also operates a Globe Wireless radio station with 30 channels. "All of them are constantly full," he said. "We are putting in more channels." SUBHEAD Telemar and AIS Mr Brodje also talked about Telemar's services to build up a picture of ship traffic around Sweden and Norway, using AIS base stations. It operates 34 AIS base stations and can provide a picture of ships to subscribers over the internet. He said that AIS is causing lots of cultural change in the shipping industry, when superintendents can get on the internet and see exactly what their ships are doing. "A superintendent rang up his ship and said, that ship you are overtaking, don't get too close," he said. "It really is big brother." SUBHEAD Danaos and Broadband Maritime Dimitris Theodossiou, managing director of Danaos Management Consultants, created a stir by saying he could offer VSAT 64 kpbs always on for $400 a month, guaranteed 99.99 per cent availability, not including lease of the equipment, through Danaos' partnership with Broadband Maritime of New York. Several other VSAT providers countered that they did not know where satellite airtime could be purchased so cheaply, or that the satellite power would need to be shared between about 500 ships to get the costs so low. Mr Theodossiou said that he had already signed the contract. "The shipping industry wants to integrate ships with the shore," he said. "They are looking to integrate things more closely." However with a broadband always on connection the ship and shore systems can talk to each other in real time. "Officers can update the office systems - payroll, crew, requisitions, ISM," he said. "Officers can access corporate information - SMS manuals, order statuses, maintenance job scheduling, pay roll information, weather optimal route calculation." "The system can be used for training crew," he said. "We [Danaos Shipping] train our crew through the internet. They don't even have to come to the office." Mr Theodossiou said that the current practise of trying to link lots of different software systems together was only a "short term solution"; shipping companies need a software system which does everything. "Danaos has launched the mother of all systems," he said. "It runs off a single database. It aims to be the first ERP system tailored to shipping. You can fully integrate the vessel procedures into one system." The software system does not need broadband to work. "You can use any communication media," he said. "You can even use Globe Wireless." A future product launch will be a ship routing system, which calculates the costs of different ship routes taking into consideration fuel costs and ship operating costs. "It can address disputes between a charterer and the company," he said. SUBHEAD How much satcoms? "We have a few shipping companies which have not got their Fleet terminal. Then we were trying to persuade people to adopt 64 kbps. Then we have players asking people to adopt broadband speeds," said Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC. "The shipping industry is not of one mind in this," said Gregor Ross. "There are many shipowners who only use Inm-C, maybe with a GSM phone. It takes a lot of time to convince someone who only spends $200 a month to buy a Fleet 55 terminal." Aris Iglessis of Samos Steamship said that his company finds mini-M adequate for its needs. "For today, mini-M is OK," he said. "We are not ready to pay a lot of money to proceed. But I think we are at a breakthrough point. I'm now sure when it will happen or where it will happen but in 5-10 years things will change. We need to do it." Eivind Klewe, IS manager of Iverships, said his company hasn't "reached a point of needing broadband speeds," although for shore applications it uses broadband a great deal with many online software applications. Karl Linder, IT manager of B&N Nordsjöfrakt, said his company sends 10 to 15 MB per month per vessel in both ways, spending $100 to $200 on data. "But voice costs $1000 per month [per vessel]," he said. "The problem is they talk too much." Tassos Makris, IS director of Gourdomichalis, said that his company had a long discussion two years ago about whether to put GSM mobile phones on ships in addition to a mini-M and eventually agreed to it. Mike Kennedy, technical manager of Hellespont, said that it wasn't really fair to just look at the costs of data communication without also looking at voice. "We spend $7,000 per month per vessel on communication, including $5,000 on private calls," he said. "The big picture includes crew and crew satisfaction." "If you put that all together then using a VSAT can be justified." Lars Brodje, managing director of Telemar Scandinavia, suggested that with the rate of change, shipping companies should be wary of signing long contracts with satcoms suppliers. "We have VSAT companies asking for 60 month contracts. But don't go into it because the environment will change," he said. James Williams, a venture capitalist with Boeing, said that Boeing has a $3bn business providing remote support to aircraft and is looking at providing similar services in the maritime sector. "We thought the maritime space had many similarities to what we do on aircraft," he said. SOFTWARE Bjorn Berger, key account manager with DNV IT solutions, talked about the MariNet consortium, involving DNV Software, Iverships, IUM Shipmanagement, Wilh Wilhelmsen, Cap Gemini, Nera and others to develop IT systems for the shipping industry. "Marinet is a "think tank" for shipping company IT solutions - we want to have some influence on the vendors, we want a strong community - we want to promote good projects. We want to push standards in the areas they are needed." "In Marinet we want to lead," he said. "A lot of people in shipping don't want to be leaders. They want to be followers." "We believe in web services as a very good way to develop our systems," he said. The focus areas this year are enterprise architecture, information modelling around a ship IMO number." Mr Berger talked about VerIT4Net, a standard method for an IT infrastructure in a company, developed for DNV's internal use connecting its offices around the world. DNV is now selling the system to other companies, one of the first customers being Wilh. Wilhelmsen. SUBHEAD AMMITEC Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC, noted that AMMITEC and MariNet share many common goals, although AMMITEC has access to a broader user community (currently there are only 3 shipping companies in MariNet and nearly 100 represented among the AMMITEC membership). "We think we have scope for co-operation," he said. Dr Nomikos said that the association has three principal goals, improving the status of maritime information technology and its IT managers, and providing a forum for people to share information, and providing an industry voice for shipping company IT managers. "Its very rare we see board managers participating at board level in companies," he said. "We want a forum to share ideas. IT managers don't know who to ask. They post a question on our online forum." "Our final aim is to develop electronic standards. This is very ambitious. So we decided we would start by trying to facilitate certain problems IT managers have. SUBHEAD Electronic logbooks Tom Remman, sales manager with Kongsberg, talked about his company's electronic log book software, to replace the paper logbook. Companies currently using or trailing the software include Torvald Klaveness, V.Ships Norway, Maersk, Solstad Shipping, Bergesen, Color Line, OSM, Navion, IUM Shipmanagement, Rieber Shipping, Statoil, Farstad Shipping, Shell, Sartor Shipping, GeoConsult, Boa Offshore and Western Geco. The logbooks have been approved by Norway, Sweden, UK, Denmark, Bahamas, Isle of Man and Singapore, with Panama, Liberia, Germany, Spain and Iceland having approvals in the pipeline. Development has been underway since 2002. Kongsberg also has 140 vessels equipped with its technical log system, which connects the shipboard electronic logbook with the shipboard automation system, sending automatic reports to shore about how well the ship is functioning. The system can also connect directly to ship security alert systems (SSAS), enabling remote staff to interrogate the ship and find out how it is operating in the event of a security alert. Electronic logbooks can be filled in faster than paper logbooks he said, because often the captain has to write the same information in different paper logs. With electronic logs this is all automatic. SUBHEAD ShipNet Neil Tomlinn, director of maritime software house ShipNet, talked about the challenges of integrating together different ship operating systems and how ShipNet is meeting them. "ShipNet's objective is an organisation which can build a complete solution," he said. "The user should be able to dictate their systems operation and not be dictated to." "As a system supplier -we need an architecture that has a single navigation presentation layer." "On the outside, it will not affect the end user. He should just get the effect of that. The presentation layer, the distribution, is what the customer will interact with." "Standards to me are about removing the barriers," he said. "We need to provide tool sets that enable the data integration. Put the customer in control." ShipNet has decided to make information about its own company standards available to other software companies, so that they can integrate their software with ShipNet's. "We want to integrate with our competition," he said. "If we are going to service our customers correctly we need to facilitate that." "Any supplier that approaches us - we'll provide our standards freely available. The fact that it's out there means it can be utilised." "We need publication of standards and we need to pursue partnerships." "Obviously we would like everybody to use our systems - we feel we can provide the core application that meets the majority of needs. Hopefully our own applications will be best in class." "This is a logical way to go forward," he said. "Vessel positions - if you're collecting them through Purplefinder or using your own spreadsheets, there's no reason why that can't all go into the database and be utilised," he said. SUBHEAD Ulysses Systems Tim Ward, sales manager of Ulysses Systems, talked about the need to create software which reflects the environment which seafarers work in. "The workload onboard vessels has massively increased," he said. "In the average shipping company - look at how paperwork has increased since 1998 with ISM, ISO 9000, ISO 14000, ISPS." "Tasks are up 21 per cent. Forms are up 24 per cent. Manuals are up 57.5 per cent." "When a seafarer is doing a particular task - they want all the information in front of him. He's very very busy," he said. "We're bringing it all together. We're providing a platform to reference all this information." "Also, you can prove you do everything right." "Its very nice to have the papers that say we did everything correctly," commented Mike Kennedy, technical manager of Hellespont. "Its very handy." "Some owners employ a 2nd captain - one to do all the paper, one responsible for safety of the vessel," said a representative of Swedish shipping company Scansov. ELECTRONIC PURCHASING SUBHEAD ShipServ Paul Østergaard, CEO of electronic purchasing management company ShipServ, said he now defined his company as providing connectivity services, connecting the existing purchasing software that companies use with the software that ship suppliers use. "I want to emphasise the difference between what we do and web software," he said. "We don't want to be a software company in the traditional sense." "We are an add-on to most existing software packages," he said. "We're not in the business of doing electronic requisition software but if someone wants it we have it." ShipServ is projecting 500,000 transactions in 2004, compared to around 250,000 in 2003. The next services to be rolled out are delivery management, where ShipServ connects the people with information about the delivery of goods to the ships and shipping company. It will also do invoice management and tools to measure supplier performance, for example making reports on how long suppliers took to respond to requests for quotes. Mr Østergaard said that the difficulty in connecting different systems is that there is no single person in charge, unlike within a company where there is a central command structure. A representative of Bergesen asked about the legal issues with ownership of a shipping company's data. Mr Østergaard said that ShipServ spent a lot of time looking at it. "We don't own the data any more than Telenor owns the contents of your phone calls. But we can intercept it." Dimitris Lyras of Lyras Shipping noted that it was possible to get certification from some of the shipping class societies that a software system has adequate security on it. Mr Lyras also noted that in future electronic data standards will be required in more areas of shipping than ship suppliers. "Tomorrow your charterer will expect an invoice in a standard format, coded to certain codes, so this information flows into his accounting system," he said. SUBHEAD Vector / MeCA Paul Ashton, managing director of Vector Informatics and head of technical committee, Maritime E-commerce Association (MeCA) talked about the development of electronic purchasing standards between IMPA (International Marine Purchasing Association), ISSA (International Ship Supplier's Association), MeCA and AMMITEC, and how the work could all link together. "In 1997 - there was the IMPA project to create the initial electronic trading standard. A lot of work was done by individuals. IMPA realised it was a bigger job than they wanted to handle." "This led to MeCA, a non-profit making consortium of companies dedicated to making applications. MeCA has IMPA and ISSA in our committee." "MeCA tried to work on standards so we can all transfer data between each other," he said. "It developed MTML [Marine Trading Mark-up Language]." "MTML is an XML schema designed specifically for the maritime industry -spares purchasing. MTML is the glue that combines the buyer and seller seamlessly." "There are 3 different types of standards today," he says. "ShipNet says they will give out their way of doing things so people can use it." "There's standards industry works on [such as MTML]." "There's EU standards - public standards which cost millions of dollars and achieve absolutely nothing." "We're looking forward to AMMITEC giving us grassroots input about what is needed in the standard," he said. Mr Ashton stressed that any further work should build on MTML and the work which has already gone on. "I hate re-creating wheels," he said. "Within MTML that is a framework for improvement." "Currently we are going through some changes with the membership types in MeCA - including reduction of fees," he said. Companies will be able to use MTML free of charge, although commercial software companies incorporating MTML into their software will need to be members. "MTML 2.0 will be available at the end of May," he said. "Its not a major step change." "We need more people to get involved," he said. "That's why co-operation with AMMITEC is a good thing." SUBHEAD AMMITEC Dr Panagiotis Nomikos, president of AMMITEC, explained the origins of AMMITEC's initiatives to modernise the codification systems for purchasing of ship supplies. "Purchasing managers came to us and said they had a problem," he said. "We set up a working group and initiated the discussions." "We've got several purchasing managers from shipping companies. They said, come on you're the IT wizards - why don't you make our lives easier." "All the software houses we approached so far said, we will help you." "AMMITEC is a complementary effort to MeCA," he stressed. "Our dream is - seamless communications. If one company wants to change to another software system, they won't worry about all their data. Our common goal is - we develop this glue. ELECTRONIC CHARTS AND SECURITY Eivind S Vågslid, deputy director of the Norwegian Maritime Directorate, said that Norway is working to make ECDIS mandatory on high speed craft, followed by other types of vessels. However raster charts will not be acceptable. "Our view is that electronic charts will improve safety when used correctly and users are more aware of the limitations," he said. "Norway does not consider raster charts to meet the chart requirement," he said. "Australia has set in a paper [to IMO] saying raster charts are OK - Norway has protested. We think raster charts are good enough on many waters but on complex coasts like Norway they don't give the officer the help he actually needs." "We think if raster charts are allowed it should be after close examinations of the water." Mr Vågslid said that Norway would not obstruct other administrations wishing to accept the use of raster charts in their own waters, but they not be allowed in Norway. Mr Vågslid admitted that disagreements between maritime administrations and hydrographic offices around the world about what is acceptable have slowed down the introduction of electronic chart systems on ships. "The introduction of ECDIS was delayed due to quarrelling amongst the administrations - that is quite true," he said. "The Norwegian Maritime Directorate is responsible for all Norwegian flagged vessels - existing and newbuildings," he said. "We are responsible to the environmental department for pollution." Mr Vågslid noted that the electronic chart was invented in Norway. "20 years ago the first electronic chart saw light," he said. "The first vessels to use electronic charts were pallet carriers going between Norway and Europe owned by Seatrans." "There have been a lot of different projects run by private companies. Later the Norwegian ECDIS forum was established." "There are 3989 Norwegian vessels in the fleet including fishing vessels." "Only a few have ECDIS with adequate electronic back-up [no paper]," he said. "Maybe 20 can skip their paper charts. However 85 per cent of cargo ships on the coastal trade have ECDIS/ ECS [with paper chart backup]." "Still we have about 100 groundings a year off Norwegian coast, mainly occurring at night. If they have DGPS and electronic charts what can go wrong?" "The very typical grounding - the captain is busy resetting the ECS and not looking out of the window. That's the really typical grounding on the Norwegian coast. We have several a month." "As a port state it is a big challenge for us to check a chart system is onboard and up to date." SUBHEAD DNV Erling Linna, senior surveyor with Det Norske Veritas, presented DNV's perspective on improving ship navigation. "We are responsible for all the cockpits in the DNV fleet," he said. "DNV rules include field of vision, design of bridge / workplace, working environment, equipment carriage requirements." "50 per cent of all accidents at sea can be related to navigation - bridge system failure, collision, grounding, contact." "80 per cent of accidents are caused by failure in the bridge system." "Figures from Intertanko give the same trend." "We see too many accidents too quickly being concluded human error," Mr Linna said. "If you had an aircraft, the pilot forgot his landing wheels, people wouldn't say so quickly, he's forgotten to fly." Mr Linna also noted that with so many different bridge arrangements, if a seafarer has an accident because he doesn't know how to use a different bridge system it is hardly a human error. "All ships have different bridges," he said. "Can you imagine if you had to get used to swapping pedals on cars, if you have an accident we conclude it is human error." Mr Linna drew a map of how DNV sees computer bridge systems, looking at the person, the equipment, the interface and the procedures (see DNV slide.jpg). "ECDIS can lead to a 40 per cent reduction in accidents provided its implemented in a suitable way," he said. "There has been a recent independent study in DNV fleets," he said. "Ships with additional class notations for nautical safety have 500 per cent less accidents." Mr Linna said that the current scenario, where masters are unable to drive and read a map at the same time, is a bit daft. "You wouldn't buy a car where you have to have your mother and law in the back to read your maps," he said. "But on ships you can have someone in the back looking at your charts." SUBHEAD C-MAP Tor Svanes, managing director of electronic chart company C-MAP, noted that at shipping company Seatrans, a big user of electronic charts, the number of groundings has reduced dramatically since they were implemented. "The two 2 ships that had recent groundings were the 2 ships without electronic charts," he said. "We want a one stop shop concept. We want to give the mariner what he needs. We are also helping hydrographic offices to produce ENCs." Mr Svanes noted the difficulty in persuading shipping companies to buy ECDIS due to the back-up requirement. "You spend 3 months trying to convince someone to buy an ECDIS. Then you turn around and say you need two." Mr Svanes noted that for shipping companies using C-MAP chart display software and charts, if there is an official vector chart available, the software will automatically switch to using it. C-MAP produces official vector charts on behalf of hydrographic offices in Italy, Norway, South Africa, Greece, Columbia, Malaysia, Hellenic Navy. It supplies vector charts for the whole world, made using the same methods, but where they are not endorsed by a hydrographic office, shipping companies are not allowed to rely on them and still need to have paper. SUBHEAD Ole Berg Ole Berg, chairman of the IHO Committee on Hydrographic Requirements for Information Systems (CHRIS) and Chairman of Primar Stavanger Advisory Committee, explained some of the drawbacks of electronic charts. In several cases, the coverage of one chart does not link up exactly to the coverage of the next one - there is a small dead space where the only chart available is one of the entire world. Much of the world has not been surveyed since 1900, he said; until 1992, the ships measuring the depth of the water only knew where they were to an accuracy of 50m, and 200m to 300m until 1953. Mr Berg noted that the Danish Hydrographic Office only recoups 11 per cent of costs. It spends DKK 40m (Eur 5.4m) on surveys and DKK 20m (Eur 2.7m) on production every year, with revenues of 7m DKK (Eur 940,000). SUBHEAD Electronic Chart Centre Robert Sandvik, operations manager of Electronic Chart Centre, which operates Primar Stavanger, said that the service Primar Stavanger provides is the "final qualification and updating." "The priority list is to deliver an integrated ENC service - one stop shop solutions," he said. "It must be easy to manage and deliver services to the end users." "Lots of countries have their coastlines covered with ENC, but they don't share, because they think the data will be copied," he said. SUBHEAD Raster charts In a panel discussion, participants tackled the knotty issue of UKHO's raster charts and whether or not they should be acceptable for navigation, enabling shipping companies to throw away their paper charts. Roger Teale, from the UK Hydrographic Office, said he would like to see the Australian proposal to the IMO Maritime Safety Committee (proposing that raster charts should be deemed acceptable internationally) accepted. "I think there is evidence that the raster chart system is safe electronically. I think they give a familiarity and confidence to mariners. It would give the incentive to promote ENC use. Mariners can get used to electronic navigation. Tor Svanes, CEO of C-MAP, which produces private vector charts which could be considered a competitor to raster charts (as the 2nd best option when official vector charts are not available) said he totally disagreed. "I hope this proposal will die," he said. "Help the user out there - give him a clear message what to do. This is why he's hesitating to use ECDIS - don't confuse him with official this and official that." "Say this is what you need and what you have to buy." Roger Teale, from the UKHO, said that UKHO had looked into the possibility of giving private vector charts its stamp of approval, as such authorising their use, but decided against it due to the difficulty of checking the quality. "With raster charts you can easily check the quality. With vector charts you have complex databases. How do you assure it is correct," he said. SUBHEAD Moving forward Ole Berg said that the maritime organisations such BIMCO and Intertanko should lobby on behalf of the maritime industry to encourage hydrographic offices to make more official vector charts. "They should say, we are ready to use this technology - and you have signed up to give us have hydrographic charts which are as good as possible. We need someone to give us these charts." Dr Andy Norris, chairman of the International Electrotechnical Committee 80 (Maritime Navigation and Radiocommunications Equipment and Systems) gave his personal view that having 2 organisations to gather and distribute official vector charts, IC-ENC (operated by UKHO) and Primar Stavanger, "makes things very difficult." Mike Kennedy, technical manager of shipping company Hellespont, said, "I don't like having to pay double for a confusing system - paper and electronic." SUHEAD Ship security Sigmund Brevik, senior principal surveyor and leader of the Norwegian delegation to COMSAR, Norwegian Maritime Administration, said that in Norway, all ship security alerts will be sent as an e-mail to the Administration's centre in Stavanger. He noted that Norway may not be able to arrange all of its fleet to have ship security alert systems fitted by the July 1 deadline. "We will see how far we can get," he said. "For us we need all the time we can get. If we can wait until the first radio survey after July 1 then we will do so." Anders Arlberg from Xantic said that his company is developing ship security software, with the first product being a tool to securely store a ship's security plan. Mike Kennedy from Hellespont said that so far the authorities have not allowed ships to have an electronic ship security plan. "It's got to be on paper," he said. The ship security plan has got to be stamped - on every page." Mr Arlberg said that for the system to work, there would need to be acceptance of digital signatures by the authorities as providing acceptable security. PANEL BOX Norway and the UK - a history The electronic charts industry is going through a tricky period. There is growth - many say that almost all new-build vessels have an electronic chart display onboard, and many chart display systems are being sold on existing vessels, and many new official vector charts are coming onto the market. But there is also stalemate as hydrographic offices around the world are slow to produce the official vector charts and maritime authorities do not allow ships to navigate relying on vector charts from private companies such as C-MAP and Transas. The result is supreme confusion and cost for shipping companies. If they want the safety benefits of electronic charts, in most cases they still have to pay for paper charts as well, which means paying double; consequently many shipping companies decide to only use paper, even if the vessel has a chart display system onboard. It looks like paper charts are here to stay for many more years. The UK Hydrographic Office has created an interim solution - raster charts - which are simply an image of the paper chart displayed on the screen. Critics of raster charts, in particular the Norwegian Maritime Directorate, argue that raster charts are inferior in many ways to vector charts, and if ships use raster charts then hydrographic offices will not be encouraged to make the official vector charts. The computer cannot understand a raster chart (eg know when a ship is about to run aground or hit something) as it can with a vector chart. Also the raster chart cannot be displayed at different scales easily (zoom in / out) - zoom in and the image gets blurry, zoom out and there is so much information on the screen it is impossible to read. Supporters of raster charts argue that raster is identical to paper charts, and if maritime authorities accept paper they should also accept raster charts. They are a suitable interim step while hydrographic offices produce their vector charts, enabling seafarers to get used to electronic navigation and throw away their paper. There is also a political / business agenda here; the UK Hydrographic Office has about 70 per cent of the international market for paper charts, and manages to be profitable where every other country in the world sees producing charts as a cost; maybe because the UKHO pockets a disproportionate amount of the chart revenue. If all ships were to use raster charts, which are only provided by the UKHO, then as the ships migrated to vector charts the UKHO could easily hold on the customer relationship leading to continuing its world domination in the electronic chart era. This is a scenario other hydrographic offices are keen to prevent. If the UKHO were to behave as a commercial business, it would have a clear justification for stalling on official vector electronic charts as much as possible, since it is unlikely to have the same dominance of the vector electronic chart market as it does with paper. However UKHO argues that the principal value it adds is in actually drawing the charts ("cartography") rather than making electronic chart files from paper charts, or checking that the boundaries on electronic chart files match, or making software to display the chart, the services provided by C-MAP and Primar Stavanger. For charts were made by other hydrographic offices, UKHO adds value by checking data, comparing overlapping charts from different hydrographic offices, monitoring the quality of the surveying, sometimes spotting and correcting mistakes. If UKHO did not provide this service then it is unlikely anyone else would. Without UKHO having a major role the world's maritime industry would probably have no choice but to trust every single country in the world, rich and poor, to provide good quality up to date surveys of its coastline. 5 years ago, UKHO and the Norwegian hydrographic office collaborated on a service called Primar, to collect ENCs from hydrographic offices around the world and distribute them through a single channel. 2 years ago the British decided to withdraw from Primar, citing an unacceptable financial arrangement. The withdrawal created a lot of bad energy between the British and Norwegians; now, as the UKHO aims to build up an international ENC service of its own, it faces a major obstacle because it is not able to supply charts from the hydrographic offices which work through Norway's Primar Stavanger, now covering most Scandinavian countries and France. [Both the British and Norwegians say this is an interim problem and the hold-up is due to concerns about the integrity of the data, its encryption and discussions over the allocation of royalties]. However there is a big difference in the financial expectations of UKHO, which generates money for the British government, and the Norwegian Hydrographic Office which like every other hydrographic office on earth, only earns around 20 per cent of its expenditure. Many outside the UK believe that it is wrong for the UKHO to operate both as a government department and as a money-making institution. This is unfair on both other private companies and other hydrographic offices which are not expected to make money. This issue could be seen either as an abuse of a privileged position or a reflection of the differing expectations of government departments in Britain and Norway in terms of financial effectiveness. Whilst the Norwegians and British may not agree with each other's politics trying to change them would be more difficult than changing a country's religion. But now there is a stalemate. Shipping companies are reluctant to make the step towards electronic charts unless they can throw away their paper and avoid paying double; but there is no legal way they can throw away all of their paper charts at this point since world coverage of official vector charts is not available and raster charts are not accepted everywhere. If maritime authorities around the world (with Norway playing a leading role) were to allow raster charts or private vector charts as an interim step, where official vector charts are not available, this would open the door to enabling shipping companies to throw away their paper. Meanwhile the organisation in the world best positioned to put together a world portfolio of highest possible quality electronic charts, the UKHO, is prevented from doing so because it is currently unable to supply electronic charts distributed through Norway Hydrographic Office's Primar Stavanger. To ease the stalemate, the world's maritime authorities should agree to accept either raster charts or private vector charts or both where official vector charts are not available, enabling shipping companies to make the transition to electronic charts. Meanwhile Primar Stavanger and UKHO should reach a quick agreement on a deal to provide the UKHO with access to Primar Stavanger's charts, covering Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore and Sweden. Then the shipping industry can decide if the UKHO's services are worth paying for. Shipping companies have the choice of continuing with their trusted Admiralty brand, paying a premium to cover the costs of UKHO's cartographers to check the quality of the chart surveys from around the world, if necessary edit or add, just as they have done for several hundred years with paper charts. Alternatively shipping companies can pay less for charts sourced directly from hydrographic offices around the world via organisations such as Primar Stavanger, C-MAP and other traditional chart agents. Does the UKHO add enough value to justify its existence on its current scale in the electronic chart era? The market can decide. And with so many strong feelings involved, this is a question better decided by the market than by government departments and committees. BOX TEXT Many of the original presentations from this conference, as well as more photographs, are available on the Digital Ship website www.thedigitalship.com/presentations.htm. Digital Ship is planning a re-run of this event in March 2005. BOX TEXT Many of the original presentations from this conference, as well as more photographs, are available on the Digital Ship website www.thedigitalship.com/presentations.htm. Digital Ship is planning a re-run of this event in March 2005. SPEAKER WEBSITES Iverships www.iverships.no Samos Steamship www.samossteamship.com Barber Shipmanagement www.barbership.com Barwil www.barwil.com BASS www.bassnet.no Broström www.brostrom.se Gourdomichalis www.gmsa.gr/ Hellespont www.hellespont.com EMS Satcom www.emssatcom.com Telemar Scandinavia www.telemar.se Danaos www.danaos.gr Marinet www.marinet.no AMMITEC www.ammitec.org Kongsberg www.kongsberg.com ShipNet www.shipnet.no Ulysses Systems www.ulysses-systems.com ShipServ www.shipserv.com Vector Informatics www.vector.gr Maritime E-commerce Association www.meca.org.uk Norwegian Maritime Directorate www.sjofartsdir.no DNV www.dnv.com C-MAP www.c-map.no Primar Stavanger www.primar-stavanger.org Electronic Chart Centre www.ecc.as/ UK Hydrographic Office www.ukho.gov.uk Xantic www.xantic.net Hernis www.hernis.no (closed circuit TV) Transas Telematics www.transas.co.uk (long range tracking) EXHIBITORS AND SPONSORS Many thanks to the following exhibitors and sponsors of Digital Ship Scandinavia EMS Satcom www.emssatcom.com France Telecom www.francetelecom-mobilesat.com Palantir www.palantir.no Transas Norway www.transas.com Danaos Management Consultants www.danaos.com Marlink www.marlink.com Maris www.maris.no Admiral Chart www.admiralchart.no C-MAP www.c-map.no Laycan www.laycan.com Star Information Systems (SIS) www.sismarine.com Xantic www.xantic.net Onsoft Computer Systems www.onsoft.no Seagull www.seagull.no Maritime Telecommunications Network www.mtnsat.com Fugro Survey www.fugrosurvey.co.uk/geosoft/index.asp Marine Transaction Services www.martranserv.com ShipServ www.shipserv.com