Tomorrow's fleet managers tools today

By combining the latest technologies of GPS, radio/satellite communications and graphical information systems, we are able to bring together the components of a powerful and effective tool providing real-time Vessel and Vehicle Monitoring. VMS is rapidly becoming an essential subsystem of fleet management throughout the world.

Discover a new world of efficiency

Imagine knowing where each of your mobiles is at any time of the day to within 5 meters of their actual position. Or being able to select the most conveniently positioned mobile for the next task. Or plan the optimum route for an emergency vehicle.

Protecting the environment

Monitoring fishing fleets is an important application for VMS. In addition to tracking the position of each individual vessel, each vessel may also automatically transmit its fishing logs via Inmarsat-C™ enabling better understanding and management of ocean resources.

Few people now under-estimate the environmental risk of carrying sensitive cargoes such as hydrocarbons and other toxic chemicals. Tracking vehicles and vessels carrying these cargoes reduces this risk by enabling authorities to monitor the their progress. Any course deviation can easily be rectified and rapid response can be effected should any disaster occur.

Generic tracking applications rely on surface positioning by GPS fitted to the vessel or vehicle. Though this is the primary VMS component of all TerraVision systems, we also provide other data devices such as instruments, tags, alarms and sensors that can be communicated back to the base Control Centre. In many projects, electronic components have been designed and integrated to provide total turnkey solutions.

In maritime and fisheries, our VMS systems utilise Inmarsat-C equipment fitted to the vessel to:

• notify the Control Centre of the vessels position
• provide Email for the fishing vessels
• provide an online query tool for the control centre or patrol vessels so that the fishing fleet can be displayed on their chart display.

The most common TerraVision applications are-

• Tracking:
  • Fleet traffic movement and operational compliance.
  • System device monitoring (to return winch and equipment sensor information)
  • Precise positioning and monitoring .
  • Safety and Security monitoring,
  • Search and Rescue operations.
• Messaging
  • Email Data
  • Systems, and for the fisheries:
    • Fish catch and effort reporting
    • Weather Download

Click on the map to see a larger view.

The TerraVision software system uses a Geographic Information System and a Relational Data Base to provide spatial and tabular reports of vessel performance; if they are within operational limits or have breached defined parameters. These may be based on Speed, Movement, Relative Position, Proximity, ETA, Within / Without of Response Zones, and Time (Before, After and Duration).

The Control Centre measures the behavior of vessels/vehicles against operational criteria and business rules set by the operator. If any parameter is breached by some event, it automatically responds as an alarm. The alarm may be audio, visual, printout, recorded in the database, emailed to an address, or transferred to another system which may be a Pager Service to alert an authorised person.

Most of our projects use the decentralized processing approach of client / server architecture, to establish a centralized control station with distributed processing occurring on client VMS stations and which are vast distances from the central server.

TerraVision has an extensive set of communications interfaces for long distance data and close telemetry applications. These range from international Inmarsat data transfers including tracking of vessels, to HF, VHF and UHF radio networks, cellular networks and paging links to contact personnel in response to events.

System Summary

TerraVision provides a comprehensive tracking system that passes data to a Control Centre and optionally communicates with the fleet.

The system provides:

• A tracking system,
• VMS management capabilities

Optional:

• A chart display of fishing vessel whereabouts
• An Email system

These parameters are all consistent with an Inmarsat-C based communications system where regular but small amounts of data need to be transferred. Inmarsat-C is the most cost-effective method of doing this.

TerraVision is a Server system at the Control Centre with optional Client systems elsewhere on the local or wide area network. The Server system will coordinate all communications with the fishing vessels via the Land Earth Station (LES) and feed the client system with positional data and routed messages. There is little functional difference in VMS capability between a client system and the server system. The client is a fully functional tracking system, which will act as a client to the Control Centre TerraVision server. The Client can configure their system to suit their operations and is a mode of operation that we have successfully implemented in many fisheries around the world.

The mapping display can support numerous digital maps, which can be scanned image or vector data. This allows large and small-scale maps covering entire regions (as supplied by the Defence Mapping Agency (USA)) and local regions to be viewed at the same time. The database records and checks the identification, location, speed, direction, time and GPS status of each vessel. If any vessel's operating behaviour should not meet a parameter, an event is generated which will trigger any number of alarms.

Both Server and Client have:

• MapInfo display with full chart display
• Oracle Database with control tables kept in sync with those of the Control Centre
• Setting Regions
• Setting Alarms
• Paging officers in an alarm event
• Change the reporting interval of a fishing vessel
• Send and receive messages from vessels
• Capable of being queried by a Client vessel tracking system

If the client VMS tracking system installed has Intranet or Internet access, then it will be able to act as an online server for fleet vessels such that:

The vessel operator can request:

• The current position of all mobiles.
  
  
• The current position of all mobiles of a particular class. The operator must select the name of the mobile class.
  
  
• The current position of all mobiles within a certain distance of the vessel. The operator must enter a distance.
  
  
• The position reports of specific mobiles for a given interval. The operator must select the names or license numbers of the vessels and the interval. The interval is specified from a start date to a finish date. All data from the start date up to and including the finish date will be returned.
  
  
• An immediate poll of a vessel. The operator must select the name or license number of the vessel to poll. The shipside software prevents the operator from sending immediate poll requests to the same vessel within 10 minutes of each other. The position report is automatically sent back to the vessel operator.
  
  

The position reports received by the patrol vessel are displayed in OceanVision, which is an ECDIS Class B electronic charting system, and uses the same charts as displayed in MapInfo on the server / client sites. The mobile positions are displayed with lines joining consecutive positions and the latest mobile position are labeled with the mobile name or license number (whichever was provided in the report).

The Email environment is preferred as it takes advantage of data compression / decompression that is available to us in the SatLink software, to reduce Inmarsat-C communications costs. Also SatLink software already contains appropriate drivers to manage the Inmarsat-C unit and is a useful container for the other requirements of the Inmarsat-C unit, being email, fish catch reporting, sensor monitoring and standard messaging.

Click on the map to see a larger view.