Author_Institution :
Eng. Dept., SELEX - Sist. Integrati, Rome, Italy
Abstract :
The main lesson learnt from the installation of widely distributed VTS integrated systems, is the mandatory need to select from all the information existing at all the levels of the system, the essential parts to be distributed. A lot of information is available, well beyond the traffic data, and must be taken into account. Examples are: Sensitive Water Areas, Meteo Bulletin, Sailing Warnings, Nautical News, Routine Regulations, AIS messages, Radar tracks, Satellite data (optical and radar Earth Observation, AIS, LRIT, VMS). External Systems´ integration is performed in order to enable VTMS operators to manipulate heterogeneous data as if they were local to the System. In the same way the relevant data generated internally are exported to remote External Systems with receiver-defined format characteristics and flow timing. The data flow can be conveniently based on web-services, on condition to protect the information by means of secure authentication mechanism, encapsulated into Transport Layer Security (TLS) tunnels to provide both data confidentiality and integrity. Additional advantage of this choice is that appropriate filters can be defined by system administrator for each connection (web-service or National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) 0183 standard). The whole networked architecture of the Integrated VTS Systems developed by SELEX - Sistemi Integrati, a Finmeccanica Company have been leaded from the installed systems toward an open framework compatible with the existing standards and therefore ready to exchange data with all the other standardized systems through the existing infrastructures.
Keywords :
Web services; authorisation; data integration; data integrity; data privacy; marine radar; marine systems; peer-to-peer computing; Finmeccanica Company; SELEX-Sistemi Integrati; VTMS operators; Web services; data confidentiality; data exchange; data generation; data integrity; data sharing; distributed VTS integrated system installation; external system integration; flow timing; heterogeneous data manipulation; information protection; integrated VTS systems networked architecture; maritime awareness; receiver-defined format characteristics; secure authentication mechanism; standardized systems; system administrator; traffic data; transport layer security tunnels encapsulation; Cameras; Radar tracking; Real-time systems; Spaceborne radar; Target tracking; Visualization; Automatic Identification System (AIS); Long-Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT); NMEA 0183; Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Vessel Management System (VMS); Vessel Traffic Services (VTS); data sharing; situation awarenesses; web-services;