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Southampton UAIS Trial Adds Weather and Hydro Data
01 Dec 2002
AIMS MIII, the universal automatic identification system (UAIS) from Marine Data Systems (MDS) of South Africa has recently completed a successful trial on the Solent conducted by Trinity House in collaboration with ABP Southampton, Red Funnel Ferries, Condor Marine and Tideland Signal, which distributes the system worldwide.
The tests involved Tideland installing a UAIS base station at Southampton's VTS centre and integrating UAIS transponders into the ECS systems on the bridges of three ships using the port. These were two Red Funnel ferries (one a car ferry, the other a fast ferry) and the Commodore Clipper cross channel ro-ro.
A UAIS base station was also installed in Bembridge Fort on the Isle of Wight. The principal objectives were to evaluate the impact of the system on the end-user and to demonstrate the inter-operability of UAIS.
However, perhaps the most interesting feature of the test was the use of weather monitoring and hydrological data from the Gurnard buoy off Cowes and the Nab Tower on the eastern approach to the Solent. The data transmitted from these installations to the VTS centre was re-transmitted as a UAIS message from the base station, thus making useful information automatically available to all UAIS equipped vessels within VHF range. The same method can be used to relay any safety related data.
MJ Information No: 17727
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