Twittering the navigation news at Seawork

The original suggestion for a Twitter based service came from a navigation pilot working at a small port on the northeast coast of England using tide and weather instruments made by Ohmex Ltd.

On occasions the pilot had to escort a vessel when the harbour office was closed and nobody could relay the tide and weather information to the vessel on its approach to harbour. The IT solution proposed was for a web based service with the pilot using a mobile phone application to view the data. This suggestion did not allow for the poor mobile signal reception offshore. The proposed Twitter solution proved the best as it was available for both web based users and also SMS text message services over GSM, the 140 character message being easily understood and including basic information such as instrument location and data age.

The measurements are based around the Ohmex PortM8 instrument. Parameters include tide height, water temperature, wind speed/direction, air temperature and barometric pressure. Calculated and derived parameters include significant wave height and wave frequency.

The information delivered will be of value to general commercial shipping crews concerned with safe passage and berthing. Harbour Masters will be able to provide current tide and weather information to port users. Workboat and dredger operators, fishermen, windfarm and onshore structure crews will all benefit, as will estuary fishermen and work gangs operating on tidal mudflats, and authorities concerned with flooding and weather conditions.

During Seawork 2013, Ohmex Ltd will be demonstrating the transmission of live data from a gauge located at the event. The data will be available to ‘follow’ on www.twitter.com/ohmex or the same data can be viewed on www.tidegauge.com