FROM QUAY TO QUAY LRIT ADDS NEW LAYERS TO PORT SECURITY

In the post-9/11 world, in which there is an ever-growing emphasis on enhancing port security, VTS is assuming a much wider role than safety of navigation. For the time being, however, the geographical extent of VTS is limited – vessels can only be tracked on radar, or identified by AIS, over relatively short distances, and limiting the mandatory use of VTS to national waters minimises its value as a tool for improving safety at sea and reducing pollution.

How much more effective – and how much safer and more efficient might it make ports – if a system could be developed that could track a vessel throughout its voyage, as it departed a quayside on one side of the world until it arrived at another, weeks later, and provide this data to VTS on a continuous basis, in real-time? Such a system could, it has been suggested, enable a port to track and identify a vessel believed to be a potential security risk long before it reached its intended destination, making it much more difficult for a vessel to ‘slip through the net.’

With a global LRIT system in place, high-risk vessels could be tracked from their point of origin, and their movements and ports of call noted. Calls at unexpected destinations, or loading of cargo or containers, could be followed. Any unauthorised tampering with the ship’s cargo would alert ports and law enforcement agencies; in contrast, vessels that provided detailed information via LRIT could be fast-tracked and given quicker access to a berth. Using still more advanced technology – such as RFID – individual items of cargo could even be monitored and their status transmitted to users ashore.

held a seminar in November to respond to the recommendations made at an earlier VTS2004 Symposium, and identify the benefits – and potential drawbacks – of LRIT. The seminar also tried to identify technology that is available now – or will soon be available – to enable long range tracking to take place, and examined the important issue of ensuring harmonisation of technology used for long range tracking.

Chee-Beng Teo of the International Marine Pilot’s Association (IMPA) Singapore, told a recent International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) seminar that long range tracking has many potential advantages for ports and harbours, among them:

Enhanced security Improved vessel monitoring Improved efficiency Benefits for Search & Rescue (SAR) Improved situational awareness However, Teo also expressed some concerns, among them being the potential costs involved for shipowners and coastal/port states of supporting long range tracking, misuse of data by unauthorised users; the training that would be required to instigate it; and the proliferation of reporting requirements.

LONG RANGE SOLUTIONS LRIT will undoubtedly be costly to implement, and as seminar chairman Ed LaRue of the US Coast Guard highlighted, it will be necessary to have global providers for such a service, rather than many regional providers, and these global providers should work together under a governing body.

The INMARSAT communications network has already been identified as one potential means of transmitting LRIT data between VTS centres and other users such as national authorities, but is not the only network being proposed. Pole Star Space Applications – the proprietary provider of PurpleFinder, a Web-based solution for fleet management and maritime security, that uses INMARSAT-C – is advocating the use of PurpleFinder as a potential LRIT solution, but as Julian Longson, associate director of business development, explains, although technical solutions are already available, and LRIT is already being used in other applications – such as fisheries protection – implementing LRIT would be a very complex problem from a political/ regulatory perspective.

“Any long range tracking solutions should be a private/public system with an independent overseeing organisation, ” Longson says, noting that the industry “needed to learn from the AIS experience and move foreword carefully to ensure a system that is robust, secure and fully auditable.”

“From a technical perspective, LRIT is relatively straightforward, ” Longson continues, “but not all flag states will implement LRIT, and in many of those that do, financial and human resources are limited.” He reckons for the foreseeable future the US will be the only flag state with an intelligence infrastructure capable of effectively handling vast volumes of LRIT data.

Longson agrees that there also needs to be an oversight organisation to act as an independent LRIT regulator, acting on behalf of the IMO, whose mission would be to regulate in a way that provides interoperability (between systems) and encourages the LRIT service providers to achieve a robust, secure and fully auditable service. “The oversight organisation could also act as the accounting authority, and manage the billing/collection of monies between flag states, LRIT service providers, and satellite airtime service providers, ” he explains.

LRIT – WHO NEEDS IT?

According to Clive Davidson, President of IALA, and ceo of the Australian Marine Safety Agency (AMSA), LRIT has attracted interest across the spectrum of maritime operations, but in the ports sector specifically it is of interest to:

Port authorities, and ships’ agents, wanting to know in advance what ships are expected and the services they will require Customs, immigration, quarantine services, and port state control agencies, all of whom have an interest in the risk profiles of ships to be inspected Navigational services, providing information and related ship reporting and VTS services for safety of navigation purposes.