Pre-project Straits of Malacca and Singapore

The main project will be a concept study and demonstration of a ship traffic management system (STMS) that is able to monitor and predict traffic situations and possible future "hot spots" as well as giving guidance at an early stage to avoid such situati ons. Issues to be addressed are safety, security, traffic congestion and ensuring just-in-time arrival for more efficient use of the ships and port resources as well as for reduction of fuel use and CO2 emissions. The aim of the main project is to show h ow such a service can be implemented in the existing configuration of sensor and monitoring systems in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, including the Maritime Electronic Highway, and to quantify the possible benefits of such a service based on actual ship movement and weather data. The aim is further more to use this as background for the development of the e-Navigation concept in IMO. The project will be divided into three main parts: 1. Developing the STMS concept specification, including metrics for measuring safety, security and efficiency, traffic management strategies, and necessary information exchange standard and communication strategies. 2. A simulation study that will compare existing traffic patterns with patterns as they would be when d ifferent management strategies are used. 3. A concept demonstration that will show how the proposed system would look like for operators on shore and on the ships. The Maritime Electronic Highway in the Straits will be used as a demonstration case, but the intention is to develop this as a general simulation and demonstration tool case that can be used in other geographic areas. A high level advisory group consisting of representatives from IMO, IHO, IALA and ICS as well as participating countries' aut horities have agreed to oversee the project.