8. Future shipping

Shipping is a vital part of our transportation system. For example over 90% of all trade goes by sea which includes moving over 3.8 billion tons of cargo every year.

At any one time, there are around 20,000 cargo ships sailing in European, Norwegian and Icelandic waters.

Up to around 1999, shipping worked with a largely paper based system. But then there were two major ferry accidents resulting in hundreds of people losing their life. In addition the 'Erika' oil tanker spilt thousands of tons of toxic heavy fuel oil along the coast of France resulting in huge damage to the environment.

Something had to be done, and the answer was SafeSeaNet.

SafeSeaNet

The purpose of SafeSeaNet is to hold a central real-time database of the location of all EU ships currently sailing in European waters. It also holds details of any hazardous cargo and a history of each ships' movements. The organisations having access to the system include port authorities, search-and-rescue centres, pollution control operations and security authorities

Each ship is fitted with an Automatic Identification System that sends GPS location data to coastal control centres. Port authorities load the system with the hazardous cargo details of each ship entering and leaving port along with ship voyage data and incident safety reports.

Their official website has a good video introducing the system.

Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT)

The system was originally set up to boost maritime security by tracking EU flagged ships world wide (unlike SafeSeaNet which monitors EU coastal ships) but it soon proved useful for other agencies such as search and rescue teams. It tracks over 8,000 ships around the world every day. It exchanges data with other data centres around the world that track non-european ships.

Each ship sends its position every 6 hours to a satellite receiving centre. The satellites used include the Inmarsat and Iridium constellations.

That position data is sent to an 'application' centre that adds official ship identity and time stamps to the record.

This record is then sent to the LRIT data centre where the ship's name is added to the record.

The system is paid for by charging for each data record access made by an authorised body.

Their official website offers more details