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4 | December 2004 |
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| > | Results of Manatee Project |
| > | Demonstration of Manatee Software |
| > | The 2nd successful text of Manatee System |
| The Manatee project is coming to its
conclusion and has successfully developed an information mark-up
specification to provide an e-work solution for safe and
efficient operation of maritime transport systems by focussing
on safety management and information services. This specification
called MSML, which is an XML-based application, has just passed
voting on the ISO Committee TC8/SC10 and the draft may go directly
to a PAS (Public Available Specification). The specification has
been favourably received and is well on its way to become an
official ISO specification. It will then form an important basis for
a new initiative to develop a new international standard for
“Electronic Port Clearance”- EPC. Manatee has demonstrated that e-technology can be used to develop a framework that improves interoperability of data for the maritime community, and specifically in support of maritime safety and environmental protection. Indeed e-technology allows data interoperability, widens data re-use and improves end-to-end data management in maritime safety. In the future many stakeholders will be integrated into the waterborne supply chain by electronic means. For ship safety and security, the most important stakeholders are the Governmental bodies responsible for monitoring and control of waterborne traffic, the inspection of ships under Port State Control, and handling accidents and emergencies. Other stakeholders are Port Authorities, Ship owners, Agents, Ship repair yards, Classification Societies, and equipment suppliers. Examples of maritime applications where this feature is likely to be a key asset are the following: :: Tracking and tracing (automatic data transfer) :: VTS (Vessel traffic System with automatic transfer) :: Long distance diagnostics and repair :: Crisis Management – safety management :: Repair and maintenance planning :: E-training The MSML schema will be publicly available very soon via its own MSML web site. This will be announced as soon as it is implemented.
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| To demonstrate the functionality of MSML
language and its information exchange capability over the
Internet, a web-based application has been developed focused on
Repair and Maintenance scenarios. One of the key requirements
to be successful and appealing is the implementation of an
intuitive user-interface in order to ease emergency crisis
management and to minimise the need for
training. The demonstration application simulates information exchange between a vessel and shore-bases: The different situations that were envisaged within the framework of Repair and Maintenance are : - Emergency: accident notification - Planning requests: for maintenance and for port entering. Key features: :: Easy to use and implement: Intuitive user-interface
is a key objective as this solution must be an efficient and
reliable support tool during crisis management. Let’s try it!: You can test the
MANATEE demonstration application if you have a Web browser on your
PC. It is as simple as that! |
| In September 2004 the system was tested on board the
icebreaker Atle of the Swedish Maritime Administration. The
purpose was to check the communication performance between the
participating web servers in terms of transmission time and
transmission reliability. During this demonstration, standard
computers, a satellite communication link and the Internet were
used. The test was very successful as the transmission reliability was 100%, no faulty transmissions occurred. Indeed the built-in error handling in the TCP protocol automatically requests retransmissions of faulty or lost TCP segments if necessary. The mean value of the transmission times, of the MSML instance, during the test was 18 seconds. To optimise this process, the MSML schema is stored locally as well as standard XML schemas and DTD used by the MSML schema. Transmission time is short, and bandwidth consumption is reduced. The test proves that MSML can be used for information exchange between vessels and shore-bases without the need of high technology equipment. COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products as standard PCs, operating systems and web servers have the capability to be part of a maritime information system, where TCP/IP and the Internet can be used as an information carrier. Exchanging XML-based information also supports information exchange between different operating systems and hardware platforms; i.e. an MSML-based information system is platform independent. Showing platform independence was not part of this test, but the use of web servers and web services makes this obvious. A step forward: standardisation MSML and ISO The MSML specification has just passed voting in ISO TC8/SC10 and was accepted as a new work item, with no negative votes. Neither had any of the voting nations any request for changes so we are now investigating if the draft can go directly to PAS (Public Available Specification) or if it has to go through another voting round. In any case, the specification has been favourable received and is well on its way to become an official ISO specification. It will then form an important basis for a new initiative to develop a new international standard for "Electronic Port Clearance" - EPC Abbreviations HTML - a set of mark-up tags and rules (latest version, XHTML, conforming to XML) for developing hypertext documents, usually for presentation in web browsers HTTP – Hyper-Text Transmission Protocol, a communication protocol (utilizing TCP) to transfer hypertext requests and information between servers and browsers HTTPS – Hyper-Text Transmission Protocol, Secure, with SSL underneath HTTP MSML – Maritime Safety Markup Language, an XML application developed in the MANATEE project SSL – Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol designed to provide encrypted communications on the Internet TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol, a protocol developed for the Internet to transmit data from one network device to another/Internet Protocol, the network layer of this combined protocol. TLS - Transport Layer Security (protocol) (similar to SSL) XML – Extensible Markup Language, a standardized language for the descriptive markup of documents XSLT - Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, an XML application standard for transforming XML documents into other XML documents or other formats SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol, A minimal set of conventions for invoking code using XML over HTTP DTD – Document Type Definition, a method (alternative to XML Schema) to define the grammar of an XML application PDF – Portable Document Format, an alternative markup method for information |
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