Keeping the detail in view

He says, at present, there is a lot of data floating around ports, but often it isn’t utilised beyond the immediate need, even if there is an attempt to keep it for the future. Mr Cutler goes on to say, “The whole arena of portside management is ripe for data analysis as an information infrastructure is often missing. It’s a huge challenge for marine organisations to know how to hold all the data together.”

Further, he points out that there’s a trade off between detailed local knowledge, and a systematised approach, because in the move over to something like a database it is very easy to lose the detail of the picture in the overall push to make it available to others or even simply making it updatable.

However, an answer is emerging with the idea of “location intelligence”. He explained, a map interface be it a geobrowser such as Google or Bing or a more traditional desktop geographic information system (GIS) do help managers monitor and track activities as they happen. This goes beyond the usual remit of a Terminal Operating System, which could work with it. “Map based visualisation is a very powerful medium by which to monitor such movements,” he says. “In dynamic environments it is critical for health and safety compliance to alert changing rosters of personnel as to new circumstances. Such ‘views’ of the site necessitate collation, storage, retrieval and visualisation of data across time and space.”

The beauty of combining GIS and the internet is that different layers of information can be fed in to multiple workstations and mobile units, giving different users an up-to-date picture of conditions, ship movements, wave heights and so on. All the information is captured, referenced, connected, analysed and stored online. Mr Cutler adds that this might start to answer the truism that “the best thing to be done with your information probably won’t be done by you”.