Data Chain News

Electronic navigation systems such as GPS, Electronic Chart Displays (ECDIS) and Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) provide great assistance to mariners and significantly contribute to navigational safety. Voyage Data Recorders (VDR) were specifically designed to collect data from these electronic navigation systems and other onboard sensors for use in accident investigation. These systems provide investigators with a wealth of data about a vessel’s movements and status in the moments leading up to an accident.

Autoship Systems Corp. (ASC) has initiated a new 'total system' approach to CAD/CAM software for shipyards, aiming to eliminate what it terms the most expensive CAD/CAM inefficiencies within the design-to-manufacture process: data exchange and interface discontinuities between specialized products (and the additional training and maintenance costs that result). ASC sought to achieve these goals through designed interoperability, with the overall system bringing a shipyard's major design and construction phases into the same data chain, and the interface remains familiar through each stage of the process. Autoship's total solution includes five ASC products and software options from two partnered companies. Autostructure performs internal structural modeling tasks.