Wärtsilä has agreed a contract to update the ECDIS systems aboard an additional 50 tankers to enable route sharing as part of the STM BALT SAFE project.
STM BALT SAFE is an initiative to improve tanker safety in the Baltic Sea by providing digital vessel traffic services enabling route exchange between vessels. The project is piloting new operational services based on the Sea Traffic Management concept (STM).
Connected shore-based organisations, such as the VTS in Estonia, in Finland and in Sweden, are able to use the infrastructure to exchange route plans with vessels, enabling services like route cross-check and risk situation alert to be offered on a collective basis.
Information is transferred via AIS between ships. Between ships and shore, the data is shared through the Maritime Digital Infrastructure currently contracted to the non-profit industry consortium Navelink.
More than 400 ships have already implemented STM systems capable of sharing routes using their ECDIS, a group that will be expanded further following this Wärtsilä deal.
The new installations are expected to be completed over the course of this year, and will provide additional information to the project for further analysis of interactions between ships and between ships and shore.
“We believe that standardised information sharing is an important key to improve safety and efficiency in the shipping industry. STM makes sharing secure, interoperable and customer controlled,” said Torsten Büssow, Director, Wärtsilä Voyage.
