ISO has published ISO 18131:2025, a new standard defining the general architecture requirements for ship–shore data communication in a publish–subscribe environment, intended to support the growing use of real-time operational data and provide a common framework for interoperability between onboard and shore-based systems.
ISO 18131 sets out the roles and relationships of publishers, subscribers and brokers within that architecture, and includes definitions for message formats, client identifiers and topic naming structures. Security requirements for ensuring data confidentiality, integrity and availability are also described within the document.
The data model and taxonomy were developed to reflect typical shipboard equipment and sensor configurations, with the aim of supporting consistent data exchange between systems from different vendors. The standard is designed to enable many-to-many communication by allowing data to be transferred through registered topics, and provides a dynamic, batch-based messaging structure.
The new publication builds on existing work in areas such as navigational interfaces and shipboard data servers, including IEC 61162, ISO 19847, ISO 19848 and ISO 23807, but aims to introduce a more flexible communication architecture to accommodate a wider range of operational and regulatory data as digitalisation in shipping, ports and logistics continues to evolve.
ISO says the new publication is aimed at shipbuilders, software vendors, fleet managers, equipment manufacturers and port service providers.
