As things stand there are several reasons why vessels are tracked and by whom. Traffic management, security, commercial trade analysis and transparency are all reasons for tracking vessels. Vessel tracking and the Internet have come together in ways that both help and hinder the shipping industry. For liner operators, making the positions of their vessels available on their own websites, or those of vessel monitoring services, allows cargo owners to compare positions with schedules and to see the expected arrival of cargoes without needing to contact the line or its agents. Individual container vessels may be carrying cargo for several thousand different consignees, so this means that company staff are not constantly tied up on the telephone or answering e-mails and faxes, and chasing the vessel’s latest position.
For operators in non-liner trades where it is customary for charter party agreements and fixture negotiations to contain confidentiality clauses, the publication of information about positions and cargo destinations taken from automatic identification system (AIS) transmissions can create a problem. Owners can argue in their defence that they are obliged to transmit the information, but there are ways to limit the damage.
Shipowners have traditionally tracked their assets, even in the days before satellite communications made things easier. This tracking was by way of the daily position message, using radiotelegraphy when at sea and courtesy of the local agent when in port or traversing canals. Not every owner was assiduous in this task which is why IMO included the sending of a daily report in guidelines issued in 2002.
In addition transmissions from the ship via e-mail or other forms of communication can carry details of the ship’s position, as reported by its GPS signal at the time of transmission.
Today the requirement to transmit information regularly – now at least four times each day – forms part of the long-range identification and tracking (LRIT) regime. LRIT along with a Ship Security Alert System (SSAS) may have provided the authorities with useful information in some of the hijacking and piracy cases that have afflicted shipping recently, as well as in some cases of distress, but there are no documented cases of a ship being identified as a security threat by means of vessel tracking technology.
On the contrary, the few terrorist attacks there have been, and most cases of piracy, have involved vessels that are not covered by tracking regulations. Even if they had been, they would not have advertised their presence and would have switched off or disabled the automatic equipment.
In theory, flag states and port states to which the information is released should have records of the movements of all vessels on their registers or in their waters, although any contravention of the rules is likely to remain known only to the flag state. LRIT began as a US idea and its use for following ships in territorial waters is almost certainly confined to a few states that feel the need to establish whether any ship in their waters poses a threat.
For most states, routine vessel traffic system (VTS) surveillance is more than sufficient. The concern here is not to do with security but with safety and pollution prevention, including policing emission control areas (ECAs). In this regard AIS is the main tool. Developed and intended as an aid to navigation, with particular emphasis on the identification of vessels presenting a collision hazard, it is now routinely used for many other purposes for which it was not designed or intended.
The advent of satellite AIS services has re-ignited the debate that took place when the system was initially introduced and details of vessels’ positions and cargoes were made public by companies intercepting the transmissions, or contracting with official shore-based organisations such as VTS and coastguards to purchase the data.
Back in 2004, ship operators complained that such services not only compromised the security of their vessels by allowing those with nefarious intent to know the precise location of specific vessels at any given time, but also compromised commercial contracts. These complaints were taken seriously by IMO. The matter was considered by the Maritime Safety Committee, and a statement was made by IMO regretting the practice.
To this day, the IMO website carries the statement, which says: “The committee condemned the regrettable publication on the world-wide web, or elsewhere, of AIS data transmitted by ships and urged member governments, subject to the provisions of their national laws, to discourage those who make available AIS data to others for publication on the world-wide web, or elsewhere, from doing so. In addition, the committee condemned those who irresponsibly publish AIS data transmitted by ships on the world-wide web, or elsewhere, particularly if they offer services to the shipping and port industries.”
The number of service providers offering satellite AIS data is increasing and recently many of these have complained that the quality of AIS information is being manipulated by owners making partial or inaccurate entries. They say that this is making it difficult for national security organisations to carry out effective surveillance. If it were only the security requirements of states that were at issue it could be understood, but many of the satellite AIS services also count commercial organisations, including commodity traders, among their subscribers.
At the beginning of March 2015, commodity market monitoring and information specialist Genscape introduced a new weekly North American waterborne crude oil report, providing a more complete picture of the US crude delivery supply chain. In an effort to shed light on the changing global oil supply chain, Genscape said that its acquisition of Vesseltracker means it can now combine its own data and market intelligence to follow the supply lifecycle, from forecasted production to transportation by all means, including ships, to delivery at key refineries or storage facilities.
“The new report strongly complements the pipeline supply and inventory monitoring reports already being produced by Genscape,” said Dominick Chirichella of the Energy Management Institute. “The report provides the most timely import data available, of not just crude oil movements into the US, but movements by quality and location, along with movements in Jones Act vessels of US indigenous crudes.”
The report also includes calculated rates and transportation costs, as well as an analysis of the market implications of vessel movements. “Today’s more integrated ground and waterborne supply chains are accelerating demand for transparency into market fundamentals,” said Chris Sternberg, Genscape’s managing director of oil. “We are excited about the addition of this report because it drastically improves our coverage of the entire crude supply chain and allows us to provide the market with valuable insight to fully understand the current state of the market.”
With so much commercial surveillance taking place it is understandable that operators and cargo interests are reluctant to reveal information. They can legitimately circumvent the matter of omitting destination data from AIS when leaving load ports and while at sea by the commercial expedient of having numerous destinations as options in a charter party.
If AIS is now considered to be less than reliable for security purposes, its role in safety is also being questioned. Debate continues about the role AIS plays in conjunction with IMO’s collision regulations. Some see it as a positive safety contribution and appropriate use of vessel tracking. Others are not so certain.
In 2014, Swedish Maritime Administration senior research co-ordinator Anders Brödje presented a paper at the International Symposium Information on Ships in Hamburg, Germany. The report said that accidents at sea are much rarer than in the past due in part to technical innovations such as GPS and AIS. However, The Swedish Club, in the latest issue of its publication Navigational Claims, reports that over the last decade navigational claims arising from events such as collisions, contacts and groundings have remained at consistent levels despite advances in technology and safety systems.
According to The Swedish Club, lack of situational awareness, poor communication between bridge team members and with other vessels along with disregard for anti-collision regulations is the main cause of the continued state of affairs. That view is backed up by the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) report into the collision in January 2014 between the multipurpose vessel Rickmers Dubai with the unmanned crane barge Walcon Wizard under tow by the tug Kingston in the Dover Strait.
The report said the collision was caused by Rickmers Dubai’s officer of the watch not keeping a visual lookout and monitoring the radar, instead relying solely on AIS information to the point where even safety broadcasts by Dover coastguard were apparently ignored (Marine Electronics & Communications December 2014/January 2015). As a mandated carriage requirement AIS, even with its evident shortcomings, is not under threat. However, there are alternative ideas and technologies being promoted and tested, which could eventually supplement it for navigation purposes. MEC
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