Japan-headquartered marine electronics specialist, Furuno, will provide 43 ships with Sea Traffic Management-compatible on-board systems.
STM, or Sea Traffic Management is possibly the largest maritime test bed ever involving 300 ships, 13 ports and 3 shore centres. The STM Validation Project has a total budget of approximately 43 million euros. 50% is co-financed by the EU (Connecting Europe Facility/Motorways of the Sea).
Test Manager Björn Andreasson of Swedish Maritime Administration said: “To have a fourth supplier delivering systems proves the general interest in the STM concept. The future developments of STM will be driven by commercial actors like Furuno.”
Tero Airissalo, Sales & Marketing Manager at Furuno explained: “Furuno is striving to be among the first with new technology and solutions. We recognise the long-term benefits of STM in the form of higher security and safety, increased efficiency and a good impact on the environment. But STM is also beneficial in the near future. In the current test, customers using our system will save a lot of fuel through better optimised routes and better timing of the port call arrival.”
The development of Sea Traffic Management is open, and all interested parties are invited to join as associate partners and take part in the development of the future. Supplied services during the test include route optimisation, enhanced monitoring, port call synchronisation, ship-to-ship route exchange and many more. Fuel can be saved, port call efficiency increased and accident risk reduced.
By Jake Frith
