A new amendment to the EU Community Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information Systems will permit electronic interchange of information between Member Countries. Ingrid R\u00f6mers, Secretary of the European Harbour Masters\u2019 Committee, explains the aims of this project as increasing volumes of oil are brought to the global market via EU waters, oil tanker traffic has grown rapidly. The significant growth in tanker traffic, together with the high levels of hazardous goods traffic already being transported, has led to a corresponding growth in environmental risk in most of the main sea areas of the European Union. As a result of the EU drive to move goods transport off the roads, there could be further growth in future maritime traffic. In addition, there is also growth in passenger traffic, spread around the EU. Added to the growth in traffic, in many EU sea areas, weather conditions, geographical restrictions, tidal conditions and other factors mean that the danger of accidents may increase, unless improved safety and environmental risk reduction procedures are put in place. At the core of the required procedural improvements are traffic organisation measures, which involve the monitoring of ship movements, with the aim of preventing the development of dangerous situations. With these things in mind EU Directive 2002\/59\/EC was set in place, in order to establish a Community Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information System can be established. The purpose of this is to ensure that ships in EU waters, and their cargoes, are monitored more effectively than in the past, and that there is a more consistent approach across all EU sea areas.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Planned amendment<\/strong><\/p>\n An intended amendment to the 2002\/59\/ EC Directive takes the monitoring of vessels in EU waters many steps forward. Its implementation, planned for 2014, aims to connect information from the national authorities by creating and linking all national single windows, \u2018SafeSeaNet\u2019-like, systems. The concept text for the amended directive reads:<\/p>\n \u201cSafeSeaNet is a specialised system established to facilitate the exchange of information in an electronic format between Member States and to provide the Commission with the relevant information according to Community legislation. It is composed of a network of national SafeSeaNet systems in Member States and a SafeSeaNet central system acting as a nodal point. The Community maritime information and exchange system, SafeSeaNet, shall enable the receipt, storage, retrieval and exchange of information for the purpose of maritime safety, port and maritime security, marine environment protection and the efficiency of maritime traffic and maritime transport\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n When drafting the text, the Commission has carefully listened to MarNIS, a European Community research project, bringing together a wide spectrum of 50 experienced partners – the European Harbour masters being one of them – to develop maritime navigation and information services on a pan\u2013European basis, addressing practices and solutions for the year 2012 and beyond. The four-year project is about to finalise its results and recommends these results to the European Commission. At the heart of the MarNIS concept is the creation of an information exchange structure. Simplifying of reporting requirements and improving interoperability between different members\u2019 state and private systems should bring coherence, transparency and efficiency. A better follow-up of the maritime traffic is intended, through screening all elements and data required from a ship while it is still navigating towards the port. Also, the enhanced use of tracking technology, such as AIS, has been studied. This will improve the efficiency of traffic monitoring and control of operations, allowing the provision of better services such as emergency tugs, oil pollution combating vessels, salvage capabilities and assistance in allocating ships to safe havens. The idea of this is that neighbouring countries will be enabled to share maritime control public services resources better and maybe even pool the control efforts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Harmonising the network<\/strong><\/p>\n Another focus of the MarNIS project has been the standardisation and harmonisation of a European network for the safety and routing of ships at sea including maritime weather information. In addition, it will enable the updating ships\u2019 electronic navigation charts and other shore-to-ship services using modern telecommunications means. The ultimate goal of the MarNIS concept is to have a system in which the vessel\u2019s master will be required to report only once, all other updates being fed automatically into the information messaging structure and passed on to the relevant authorities. A messaging structure designed to involve all authorities, not only maritime, is under development so that the passage of a ship may be as safe, efficient and environmentally sound as possible. Shore-based operators will be able to monitor and provide the appropriate level of assistance wherever the ship may be located in the coastal waters, shifting the emphasis from remedial to proactive services. As in the draft amended Directive 2002\/59\/EC for 2014, the MarNIS concept also has at its heart the creation of a national single window (NSW). This NSW is intended for electronically storing and distributing details of transiting vessels on the basis of once-only reporting. These are then available for vessel traffic management and port entry, as well as pollution control and search and rescue. It is now up to the EU member states and port communities to engage in a process of firstly accepting and embracing the sharing of information and secondly to decide on implications and on exactly how to implement the concept. www.harbourmaster.org<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new amendment to the EU Community Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information Systems will permit electronic interchange of information between Member Countries. Ingrid R\u00f6mers, Secretary of the European Harbour Masters\u2019 Committee, explains the aims of this project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects-initiatives-greenport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}