The European Union has granted a €21m grant to the Sea Traffic Management (STM) Validation Project, a Motorways of the Sea project defined within the MONALISA 2.0 project.

This new grant will allow two significant test sites to get underway, one in Northern Europe and one in the Mediterranean Sea and a 300 vessels, 13 ports of differing sizes and three shore centres will actively take part in the validation process.

Ulf Siwe, from the Swedish Maritime Administration, which is managing the project, told: “Sea Traffic Management (STM) is a concept building on services made for sharing secure, relevant and timely maritime information between authorised service providers and users, enabled by a common framework and standards for information and access management, and interoperable services.”

He added that the STM concept will lead to improvements in situational awareness for the purpose of facilitating reduced number of accidents and incidents (by proactively de-conflicting routes), optimised resource utilisation (by knowing what the intentions of other actors are) and secured route passages (by knowing what the intentions of other actors are).

It will also increase predictability of arrivals and departures, just-in-time operations (by enabling stakeholders and service providers to be efficiently organised for handling vessel movements, port resources, and hinterland connections); and innovation capability in the ecosystem (by giving rise to increased availability of unforeseen non-vendor dependent, standardised and interoperable services at low cost).

The 13 ports taking part in the project are Umeå, Sweden and Vaasa, Finland – Kvarken Ports Gothenburg, Sweden, Oslo, Stavanger & Bergen, Norway, Valencia & Barcelona, Spain, Limassol, Cyprus and Civitavecchia, Genoa, Naples & Venice, Italy.

The wider MONALISA 2.0 project strives to make maritime industry safer, efficient and more environmentally-friendly

source:shortsea.info