Entry and Berthing Ship and Port Advising System as an Element of Port ITS

Safety is a severe issue for the ship approach to a port. The choice of manoeuvring procedures is based on the ship in combination with the Harbour Master experiences which have the potential for failing in difficult weather conditions, because of the str ong dynamic variability in near coastal areas. Operational systems guiding the ship into the harbour by providing hydro-meteorological information in real time to the ship and harbour authorities are actually not available. In this project we therefor a im for the development of such a decision support system (DSS). The project proposed here is part of an international effort, aiming for the development of a decision support system specifically for the Gdynia harbour (Poland) approach as a pilot area. Th e methodology developed will be applied for that harbour approach and recommendations for generalisations will be developed. In addition the marine monitoring part of the proposed system will be complemented with additional oceanographic instrumentation a nd modelling for environmental measurements. The purpose is to demonstrate that installed port and harbour systems can serve multiple purposes including minimisation of environmental impact, object tracking and monitoring of changes in the marine environm ent Five institutions are contributing the the international initiative. Three institutes from Poland and two from Norway. The overall project consists of six Workpackages: 1) Requirement definition, 2) Identification of environmental conditions, 3) Ship response to the environmental impact, 4) Ship interaction with port infrastructure and other vessels in real wheather conditions, 5) Development and verification of the Ship Master and Harbour Master decision support system (SafePort) and 6) Coordination and project website management. The main focal areas for the Norwegian institutes are laying within Workpackages WP 3 and WP 6.