Study on development of vessel shore report management system for IMO MSP 8

1. Introduction

The e-Navigation Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP) is currently being developed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for the analysis of user requirements. By comparing user needs with the present status, the discrepancies between them were identified and nine solutions were determined to solve the discrepancies. Among the nine solutions, five were selected, which are S1–S4 and S9, through the prioritization of importance and urgency. Using FSA (Formal Safety Assessment, which was submitted by Norway, seven RCOs (Risk Control Options) were determined and consequently 16 MSPs (Maritime Service Portfolios) were derived. During the procedure, not only the Sub-Committee on Navigation (NAV) in the IMO e-Navigation CG (Correspondence Group), but also various international organizations, such as the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA), played an important part [1].

After establishing the e-Navigation infrastructure, IT Services will be provided to enhance safe and economic navigation. IT Services or Maritime Service Portfolios (MSPs) should be sufficiently reliable and effective for the safety of navigation. Table 1 shows 16 MSPs that have been derived by the IMO after many logical processes and much debate. This paper focuses on MSP number 8, which comprises vessel shore reporting of the IMO. The IMO has ratified the Convention on Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic (FAL) to implement a standardized document format for the arrival/departure of ships. In this study, FAL.5-Circ.36, which covers the guidelines for setting up a single window system in maritime transport, was reviewed [2]. These guidelines do not define any particular standard of ship reporting information in order to implement a Single Window System (SWS). A significant problem as ships travel between many ports is that they are required to complete many different ship reports in different formats, since ports in different nations do not follow any standard reporting data format.

Table 1:

List of 16 MSPs determined by IMO

In the case of the Norwegian SafeSeaNet (SSN), which is part of the European SafeSeaNet, a vessel and voyage reporting system intended for use by commercial marine traffic arriving at and departing from Norwegian ports is used [2]. This is not sufficient to cover the ship reports of all ports of the world. During the 17th Session of the IALA e-NAV Committee, MSP 8 vessel shore reporting (VSR), also based on SafeSeaNet, was discussed [3]. Rodseth O.J. attempted to integrate the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) information models into the S-100 Common Maritime Data Structure (CMDS) for MSPs [4]. In the present study, the required vessel reports of various ports and coastal state authorities worldwide are investigated. As Figure 1 shows, 33 ports worldwide were investigated in order to collect aggregated vessel report information of different national ports. Next, the required information was analyzed and a Vessel Shore Report Management System (VSRMS) was developed.

Figure 1:

Investigated ship reports of 33 ports world wide

When a vessel proceeds to enter a port, it is required to complete a large number of documents for the port state control, customs office, quarantine office, etc., in order to obtain port clearance. The reporting documents and their styles differ not only according to the country, but also according to each port. Vessel reporting is mostly conducted manually on paper, which is inefficient and time-consuming, and similar reports are required to be submitted at multiple ports, resulting in repetition and errors. The current vessel reporting system gives the mariner an excessive workload at times when the vessel is entering ports or straits, which makes them busy and could leave the vessel in a dangerous situation.

To solve the issues concerning the present vessel shore reporting system, in this study vessel reporting documents of various countries and ports were investigated, as reporting documents have at present not been standardized and those of each national port have their own reporting style format and data contents. Table 2 shows a list of vessel reports of different national ports. After an exhaustive investigation, complete vessel report information was obtained covering almost all necessary information required for port clearance. In this study, the structure of the database designed to manage vessel reporting information for each port of various countries is discussed.

Table 2:

List of investigated vessel reports of various national ports

In order to make the transfer of data and the exchange of information much more reliable, efficient, and paper free, a software application called VSRMS was developed. VSRMS is capable of auto-managing and generating various types of vessel reports in the original report style and format of each national port. In the later sections, the developed system architecture, design, development, and its vessel report generation capability will be described in detail.

2. Database Design

The database was designed to manage the data analyzed and collected through vessel reports required by each port of various countries. To make the database centralized and to avoid data redundancy, all the data attributes of vessel reporting information mentioned in Tables 3, 4, and 5 were categorized. This means that the related vessel reporting data was organized according to particular topics. For example, the “Voyage” category in Tables 5 includes information such as the voyage number, purpose of call, period of stay, on board crew or passenger quantity, and buoy number. “Departure” includes information such as port name, date, and time. Similarly, other information was categorized according to the related attributes into “Arrival”, “Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA)”, “Estimated Time of Departure (ETD)”, “Agent”, “Point of Reporting (POR)”, “Point of Contact (POC)”, “Port of Call”, etc. With all the data organized and centralized, generation of reports is greatly facilitated.

Table 3:

List of information for vessel

Table 4:

List of information for ballast water

Table 5:

List of information for voyage

2.1 Vessel Reports and Information

Table 6 shows the categories, described in detail in Tables 3, 4, and 5, that provide information for each individual vessel report. For example, the “General declaration report” in Table 6 contains the categories of Vessel Information, Voyage Information, and Certificates described in Tables 3 and 5. Similarly, the “Ship’s particulars” report contains the categories of Vessel Information and Ship’s Particulars described in Table 3. As most of the vessel reports require the same types of basic information such as the vessel and voyage information, the information was categorized in order to avoid duplication of data.

Table 6:

Vessel reports and information

2.2 Entity–Relationship Diagram (ERD) Model

The Entity–Relationship Diagram (ERD) model identifies the concepts or entities and the relationships between these entities. It is often used as a way to visualize a relational database: each entity represents a database Table, and the relationship lines represent the keys in one Table that point to specific records in related Tables [5]. As the ERD model developed in this study is too complicated to fully explain in this paper, only a part of it is described. Figure 2 shows the ERD model related to voyage information that was designed and normalized for managing the reporting data mentioned in Tables 3, 4 and 5. Any vessel is able to use the system database schema for their maritime transport reporting system.

Figure 2:

Voyage information schema

The ERD Information Schema for voyage information is described below.

2.2.1 Voyage Information Schema

Figure 2 shows the voyage information schema that contains voyage information-related entities with attributes, and the relationship between these entities, as described below:

1) Voyage information, estimated time of arrival (ETA), estimated time of departure (ETD), arrival, departure, port authority, point of contact, point of reporting, and point of reporting company.

2) Security (ship security information, valid International Ship Security Certificate (ISSC), security arrangements, appropriate procedure, ship level of safety) and Security details (security officer name, past record, financial security holder, insurance period, etc.).

3) Quarantine (health questions, last 10 ports of call, etc.) and Qanswer.

4) Ship store (place of storage on ship, weapons, drugs) and Ship store articles (name, quantity, unit, type, etc.).

5) Waste Notification (delivery type, last waste port, last waste date) and Waste details (waste type name, waste item name, delivered, maximum storage capacity, estimated waste amount, etc.).

6) Port (current port name, arrival port name, date time, next port, previous port, security level, number of crew, period of stay, cargo, etc.) and Position (latitude and longitude).

7) Cargo (report type, discharge port name, report port name, date, loading port name), Cargo information (name of cargo, description, gross weight, cargo dangers, measurement, UN number) and Dimension (height, length, and width).

8) Nil List (List of Nil items).

9) Port Authority (protective supervisor, deck protective guard, hatch protective guard, etc.).

10) Tank condition (name of tank, weight, salinity).

3. System Architecture and Design

Architectural design is the initial design process of identifying the system and establishing a framework for system control and communication [6].

Figure 3 shows the architectural design of VSRMS. The .Net application interface which is for handling the database is linked to the MySQL database via the MySQL Connector/ODBC (Open database connectivity). For manipulating and creating reports, the .Net application is linked via Crystal Report library to the SAP Crystal Report tool. It retrieves the vessel report information from the MySQL database and generates ship reports. The generated reports can be exported in multiple formats, such as MS Excel Spreadsheets, Comma Separated Values (CSV) files, XML files, Adobe PDF files, MS Word Documents, and Rich Text Files. The reports can be printed, saved to a USB flash drive, faxed, sent as an attachment to e-mails, or uploaded to a (local or cloud-based) reporting database as an XML file.

Figure 3:

Architectural design of VSRMS

4. Development

As mentioned above, the VSRMS database software application was developed to produce sophisticated ready-touse vessel reports, allowing easy creation and modification.

4.1 VSRMS Information Wizards

The software application was developed by categorizing user-friendly information wizards for entering and retrieving data to generate vessel reports of each national port in their required report style format.

Figure 4 shows the main user interface of VSRMS. From this screen, the user can directly access any category of reporting information wizard input forms that are used to generate the necessary reports. In most cases, the information that is entered into the system is used to generate several different reports that comply with the requirements of a variety of shore-side authorities. At the bottom of the user interface is a button that is used to generate the reports.

Figure 4:

VSRMS main window

Figure 5 shows the Voyage Information wizard that allows the user to enter or update the voyage information, such as voyage number, arrival port, departure port, ETA, ETD, and agent.

Figure 5:

Voyage information wizard

Figure 6 shows the Vessel Information wizard that is used to enter or update the vessel information.

Figure 6:

Vessel information wizard

The Person Information wizard is used to enter or update any basic information related to people on board, including Master, Crew, Passenger, Officer, or others, as show in Figure 7.

Figure 7:

Person (Crew/Passenger/ master or others) registration

For manipulating the reporting information, the user is able to perform different operations, such as Add, Update, Delete, or Clear. The updated information will be organized and ready to use for producing vessel reports.

4.2 Reports

The reporting data that are entered using the information wizards are stored in the database in several relational Tables. The data can be accessed through SQL queries using an SAP Crystal Report tool in order to generate the vessel reports. The process for creating a report consists of the following steps:

1) Decide which information is required.

2) Select appropriate Tables (columns/rows) from the database.

3) Design the report layout.

4) Select the required fields (columns) from the Tables and store them in the proper fields of report objects or cells.

5) Use subreport in the main report if needed, select the necessary data from the database, and store them in the proper fields of report objects or cells.

6) Create the report based on the results.

7) Generate and preview the report document.

8) Export the generated report in any given format such as .XML, .XLS, .DOC, .RPT, .PDF.

4.2.1 Example of Procedure to Generate Report

The following procedure illustrates the design, development, and generation of a “Crew List” report for the country “China” and port “Guangzhou.”

1) Observe the original crew list report format and data contents of port Guangzhou, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8:

Original report format of China_ Guangzhou_Crew List

2) Decide on the following information needed to create a report:

• Name of ship, port of arrival, date of arrival, nationality of ship, port arrived from.
• Crew information (full name, last name, rank, nationality, date of birth, place of birth and seaman’s book number).

3) Select the appropriate data fields that contain the abovementioned information in the database by SQL Query. Figure 9 shows the selected data fields.

Figure 9:

GUI view of database fields

4) After designing the main report layout identical to the original report, drag and drop the required fields (columns) from the selected data fields and store them in the proper fields of report objects, as shown in Figure 10. In this case, the name of ship, port of arrival, date of arrival, nationality of ship, and port arrived from are shown.

Figure 10:

Design view of crew list main report

5) For the crew information of the above main report, a subreport needs to be created using the same method of dragging and dropping data fields from the database, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11:

Design view of crew list subreport

6) In order to obtain the required data from the database for the Crystal Report, “selection experts” are used. Create selection experts of current voyage number and current port call as in the following code example:

{voyageinformation1.NumberOfVoyage}={? Voyage Number} and {port1.Name} = {? Port of call}

7) Finally, in order to generate the required crew list report, click “Generate Reports” from the main window of VSRMS shown in Figure 4. Then, select the required nation, port, and report type by using the drop down box as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12:

Select nation, port and report type

8) Select the current voyage number and current port of call to generate the report for the selected voyage and port as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13:

Enter required data to generate report

9) Figure 14 shows the generated crew list report for the country of China and port of Guangzhou using VSRMS.

Figure 14:

Generated crew list report of nation China and port Guangzhou by VSRMS

10) Export the crew list report in PDF format, as shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15:

PDF view of generated crew list by VSRMS

11) Similarly, all the vessel reports of each national port can be designed and generated in their required report formats using VSRMS.

12) Figure 16 shows a flow chart of the report generation process, and Figure 17 shows the interface view of the report generation of each national port using VSRMS.

Figure 16:

Flow chart of report generation process by VSRMS

Figure 17:

Reports generation by VSRMS

5. Conclusions

In this study, IMO MSP 8, which is a vessel shore reporting service, was developed. During the development, all types of vessel shore report information and document formats were investigated. The types of reports, information, and document formats vary extensively according to the nation and port. This paper examined the documents and information required for vessel shore reports from a wide range of ports and countries. The information required in ports and countries not included in this study is similar to that investigated; hence, the investigated information for vessel shore reports can provide a basis for international standards. International standardization of vessel shore reports by the IMO will simplify the reports. However, this could require an excessive time frame. The developed VSRMS application can be conveniently used by shipping companies and vessels until standards are developed by the IMO. It is currently undergoing testing by a shipping company to verify its usability and reliability.

References

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