Boxing clever

Shiploc has previously been used in law enforcement applications where about 4,000 fishing vessels are equipped with the satellite communication system for vessel monitoring. The original application, anti-piracy, was of interest for ships sailing in the Malacca Straits and Indonesian region . This was also the origin of the contract that CLS ? the subsidiary of the French space Agency that operates the Shiploc ? has with the International Maritime Bureau, which collects information on all piracy attacks and provides law enforcement support worldwide. IMB also receives Shiploc alerts and will alert the ship owners, as well as help coordinate rescue.

The Shiploc unit is packaged in a modest grey box, which looks like any other junction box on a ship and includes all the hardware, such as aerial, GPS receiver and Argos satellite transmitter.

Unlike its competitors, it is not based on the Inmarsat satellite system but on Argos, which allows it to process positions without using GPS. Jean-Pierre Cauzac, business development manager for CLS explains that the purpose is not to permanently compare positions but to be able to operate in case of non-GPS performance. In the case of, for example, an attempt to jam the GPS receivers onboard the ship. The system has been proven to work very efficiently on fishing vessels following reports from the Directorate of Fisheries of poaching ships reporting false GPS fixes. “This GPS fix was generated inside a computer inside the ship, put into the Inmarsat transceiver and sent as a real GPS fix,” says Cauzac.

Unlike GMDSS or EPIRBs, which are silent systems, the Shiploc system is an active controlling system that regularly transmits a ship position, speed and heading,” he says. The ship owner company can also connect to the website and check a vessel?s position.

If a terrorist tries to remove the system from a ship, the CSO will be alerted that the power has been disconnected and that the system has been switched over to battery back-up, which is more likely to happen when the ship is in drydock being worked on.

CLS provides a number of solutions to stop terrorists also monitoring your ships on its website. Cauzac told The Motor Ship that if companies are very sensitive about security, it has an alternative solution, which can run on a company?s own computer system. The ship?s code, speed, heading and position are sent to this computer using PGP (pretty good privacy) encryption, so the company is responsible for maintaining security access to its computer. The advantage of this system compared with the web-based system is that it offers a permanent display of the ship?s location.

The server for the website is based in the same room as the computer used for all the satellite data transmissions, so all the data is transferred immediately from the Argos processing centre to the website without going through any third party.

Cauzac also explains: “The key point about Shiploc is the security of the service. First of all the fact that it is not a silent system and provides daily reports makes the CSO more aware and more responsible of the actions of the operation of the ship. Secondly, because we are using a system separate from Inmarsat it has its own position capability to cross check GPS positions with Argos positions. And thirdly, because we are proposing something other than the standard Internet dissemination of data.”

Cauzac also adds that he doesn?t believe in relying on the Internet. “We have a staff of operators which, when they receive an alert, have a specific procedure that includes faxing the CSO, flag state authority and IMB and following them up with telephone calls because you need to make sure that the right person has received the information,” he concludes.n