Ecdis Arpa News

While the investigation is still fresh regarding the sinking and the tragic loss of life of the South Korean ferry Sewol, early reports point to a multitude of potential problems, including a critical breakdown among the crew. As work continues to secure the ship and recover the remaining dead onboard, Maritime Reporter & Engineering News reached out to maritime training and education experts for insights on that sector’s role in helping to reduce the risk of disaster at sea.

Costa Concordia: An opportunity for advancing human factor awareness? Will the casualty advance desirable critical thinking and cognitive awareness or merely trigger shortfall RRPP? A maritime casualty with everything a novelist could hope for – a huge state-of-the-art modern passenger vessel strikes a rock and eventually grounds on the foreshore of a bucolic island town, thousands of lives are imperiled, likely chaos on the bridge, a captain – excoriated by officialdom – who…

The IMO deadline for fitting new ships with Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) is less than one year away. After July 1, 2002, all newbuilds over 300 grt must be equipped with an approved AIS transponder system. Leica Geosystems, one of the pioneering companies in AIS technology, recently published a 28-page book ("A Complete Guide to Automatic Identification Systems") that is loaded with useful information on AIS technology, how it works, international standards and carriage requirements. At the Norshipping exhibition in Oslo, Leica unveiled the first fully integrated GPS/DGPS/AIS shipboard system meeting all IMO, IEC and ITU equipment specifications. The following extracts are reprinted with permission from Leica Geosystems. What is AIS?

The Turkish Chamber of Shipping has ordered a combined full mission bridge and GMDSS simulator system from Transas Marine (UK) Ltd. to be supplied to the Training Center of TUDEV Maritime Academy, located at Tuzla, near Istanbul. The project is supported financially by the Turkish Ship Owners' Association. The system will comprise a full mission ship handling Transas simulator of the Navi-Trainer Professional 4000 type, including one main bridge with a full set of real ship controls and nine visualization channels, and a second CBT-bridge with reduced ship controls. Both bridges will be provided with ECDIS, ARPA/Radar, Conning and GMDSS.

Datamodul´s daughter-company, CONRAC GmbH was awarded by Kelvin Hughes for the delivery of Type Approved TFT Displays in their new and future IBS Programs. Next to the superior performance and quality aspects, one of the main reasons for this decision was, the high level of own development integrated in the concerned TFT monitors. The result can be recognized in the Queen Mary 2 bridge. All TFT displays are delivered in an OEM Chassis-Only version, ready for integration in the special design of the bridge. During the late 1990's Kelvin Hughes realized that the availability of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) for use in bridge navigation displays, such as Radar and ECDIS, was becoming limited.

Today, we live in a new era of global maritime standards, with the advent of ISO, ISM, and STCW-95. The industry has embraced these standards as mechanisms to ensure that corporate policy, company operational procedures, and mariners sailing on the open seas are measured and certified. Old internal practices have been done away with, and the new standard within the industry is to certify compliance in companies and aboard ships. At the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies (MITAGS) and Pacific Maritime Institute (PMI), it is our business to train professional mariners. Our curriculum has been structured to exceed the standards of STCW and to provide mariners with the most realistic and technically advanced training available.

Transas Marine Pacific, the Transas representative in the South-East Asian region, has supplied a bridge simulator, Navi-Trainer Professional 3000, and a GMDSS simulator, TGS 4100, to Bangladesh Maritime Training Institute (BMTI). The acquired simulation facility has enabled BMTI to organize STCW compliant courses at its premises. The full mission ship handling simulator Navi-Trainer Professional 3000 comprises ECDIS with radar picture overlay capability, Radar/ARPA, real hardware for steering and engine control, Conning center and three channels of visualization. The simulator is provided with a wide variety of ship models and extended exercise areas library, including Dover Strait, Singapore Strait, Kanmon and others.

Kelvin Hughes has earned its way onboard the most prestigious current cruise ship newbuild project. Cunard selected Kelvin Hughes' fully integrated bridge system is to be installed on board its eagerly anticipated new flagship, Queen Mary 2. At over 1,132 ft. (345 m) long, Queen Mary 2 will be the largest passenger liner ever constructed. Construction is due to commence in January at the Alstom-owned yard, Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint Nazaire, France, which has had a key role in the equipment specification process. She is expected to be launched in 2003. Kelvin Hughes will supply a flat screen bridge system comprising eight screens from which Queen Mary 2's navigation systems, radars, dynamic positioning system, engine monitoring capability, can be controlled.