Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) has announced it is developing an artificial intelligence-enabled Vessel Traffic Management system to boost the safety of navigation and the efficiency of the port.
The MPA has awarded a prototyping tender to three players for vessel traffic management to develop prototypes at MPA’s “Maritime Innovation Lab” over the next 15 months. These are Tidalis, Kongsberg Norcontrol, and Wartsila Singapore.
The next generation vessel traffic management system will be based on an open system architecture (i.e. systems that have publicly available designs as opposed to proprietary systems) and the MPA says it will have advanced features such as data analytics to identify traffic hotspots and machine learning to predict collisions while enabling the handling of higher volumes and more complex vessel traffic.
In other MPA-technology news, the MP is developing a Satellite Resource Management Platform to capture satellite images for time-critical missions. The MPA reports that the conventional method is time-consuming and and complex as users have to engage each satellite operator separately.
“Satellite images are crucial to support time-critical missions, such as searching for distressed vessels which are uncontactable,” the MPA says, adding that by using tools such as artificial intelligence, the Satellite Resource Management Platform will streamline the process of comparing and recommending the satellite type, imaging mode, and resolution suitable for the mision.