Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA)

Virtual Regional Maritime Traffic Center (V-RMTC) and Trans-Regional Maritime Network (T-RMN)

The ?Imperium Romanum? spread over nearly 6 million square kilometers of land; however, the trade was to a main extent done from the Mediterranean harbors with routes to Africa, into the Black Sea and over the North Atlantic into the Baltic. Key for control over such a large area was the ancient Roman information system. Messengers by foot or on horses as well as the signaling between the watch towers delivered vital information about conditions in the distant provinces and enabled the leaders to base decisions upon a precise situational awareness. It might be a mere coincidence that today Rome again hosts an information system that could become of global importance for Maritime Security and Maritime Situational Awareness.

On the occasion of the 4th Regional Sea Power Symposium for the Navies of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Countries held in October 2002, all the delegates agreed to the requirement of enhancing the maritime traffic security in Mediterranean Sea safeguarding regional maritime activities. The Italian Navy promoted a project which allowed the adhering Navies to choose their own level of participation and the amount of national data exchanged. In June 2003 the initiative was favorably received by almost all the contacted Navies. Their added suggestions allowed in return the Italian Navy Staff, supported by Italian Fleet Headquarter (CINCNAV), the Italian Coast Guard Headquarter (MARICOGECAP) and the Italian Navy Main Communication Center (MARITELE ROMA), to set up the first step of the Project.

During the 5th Regional Sea Power Symposium, held in Venice in October 2004, the Italian Navy presented the “Pilot Project Virtual Regional Maritime Traffic Centre (V-RMTC)”, immediately resulting in a great success. Since the beginning of the project a highly qualified and remarkable participation by the Mediterranean and Black Sea Navies has been recorded. The system reached the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) on 20th September 2006. 

On the 12th October 2006 the “Operational Arrangement” (OA) was introduced by the Italian Navy as the legal framework for the V-RMTC. It was initially signed during the 6th Regional Sea Power Symposium by 17 Countries, most of which have been historically involved in the Mediterranean region: Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Jordan, Israel, Romania, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the USA. The content and amount of the provided data is independently chosen by each cooperating Navy, which is one of the remarkable parts of the V-RMTC concept. The system, employing Internet, commercial platform and software, proved at the same time to be money saving and easy to be managed.

As Virtual-Regional Maritime Traffic Center (V-RMTC) it enabled in September 2006 the data exchange between the participating countries of Portugal, Spain, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Jordan, Israel, Romania, Britain and the USA. A demonstration took place in 2008 and the system was considered operational in November 2008. It was in the follow-on enlarged to the V-RMTC WMC.

With the establishment of the “V-RMTC Wider Mediterranean Community” (V-RMTC WMC) the project dropped the concept of involving countries with a classical interest in the Mediterranean as well as its geographical boundaries; Germany and Bulgaria joined in 2007. The WMC was established in order to distinguish different V-RMTC communities while still using the same software application and model. The navies of Belgium, Georgia, Netherland and Senegal signed the OA of the Wider Mediterranean Community on 16th October 2008 during the 7th edition of the Venice Regional Sea Power Symposium, bringing the count up to 23 participating Navy members.

Virtual Maritime Traffic Center 5+5 (V-RMTC 5+5)

Italy had launched another initiative on the conference of the “5+5 Maritime Security in the Western Mediterranean” in Rome, September 2005, with five Navies of the WMC (Italy, France, Malta, Portugal and Spain and five navies of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia). This caused the creation of a separated roadmap completely independent from the Wider Mediterranean Community’s one. 

At this stage the challenges laid no longer just on a technical and system level, but also in the diplomatic agreements, due to the politically created domains, which called for different regional networks. The individual Areas of Interest (AOI) were created by hosting the information on separated systems using the same software application. During the 3rd Chief of the 5+5 Navies Meeting (Naples, 30th of May 2007) the signatures of the Operational Arrangement brought the Initial Operational Capability.

Virtual Maritime Traffic Center Lebanon (V-RMTC Lebanon)

The Operation “LEONTE” (following the Israeli-Lebanese crisis) called for a bilateral Italian – Lebanese agreement. Still in the sub-regional context, the V-RMTC model allowed cooperation in a very delicate field, such as Recognized Maritime Merchant Picture for Lebanon (RMMP-L). The software application of the V-RMTC Model in this scenario supports the Maritime Task Force (Italian units) operating under UNIFIL mandate with solely bilateral information exchange for a Maritime Picture; (none of the data of the other V-RMTC communities is shared).

The Italian Navy established the bilateral V-RMTC Lebanon network with the mission under UNIFIL. Due to political reasons this was never intended to be enlarged into a wider cooperation.

Virtual Maritime Traffic Center 8+6 (V-RMTC 8+6)

The political development in the Middle East however brought a new and wider area of interest. The Italian Navy tried to extend the V-RMTC network towards the Gulf Region. Due to political reasons the new associated partners would not agree to the data exchange with the whole Virtual Regional Traffic Centre Wider Mediterranean Community (V-RMTC WMC). This cause another initiative for the Virtual Maritime Traffic Center 8+6 (V-RMTC 8+6).

The “8+6 Meeting”, held at Defense level in Manama on 10th December 2006, was followed by a formal invitation to an “8+6 Seminar” by the Italian Chief of Naval Staff (Admiral Paolo LA ROSA). The Seminar aimed at gathering representatives of the invited navies to discuss the Maritime Surveillance Dimension and to investigate the possibilities to make the “V-RMTC model” available to the 8+6 Community for possible adoption and implementation in 2009. The Italian Navy hosted the seminar in Rome on 17th/18th December 2008 to the benefit of six Gulf Cooperation Council members (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and eight European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and UK) belonging to the V-RMTC Wider Mediterranean Community.

Trans-Regional Maritime Network (T-RMN)

The Trans-Regional Maritime Network (T-RMN) is the last extension of the Virtual Maritime Traffic Center(V-RMTC) as a global network with 26 participating nations, hosted by the Italian Navy. Signature nations of the Operational Arrangement (OA) concerning the establishment of T-RMN for the global maritime information sharing were ALB, BEL, BGR, HRV, CYP, FRA, GEO, DEU, GRC, JOR, ISR, ITA, MLT, MNE, NDL, PRT, ROU, SEN, SVN, ESP, TUR, GBR, USA, BRA, IND, SGP. With the thought of a "Global Maritime Trusted Information Network", V-RMTC offers the Trans-Regional Maritime Network (T-RMN) as a concept with a global dimension.

On the 18th International Seapower Symposium (ISS) in Newport/USA the V-RMTC Wider Mediterranean Community (WMC) was in this context extended with the participation of Brazil, Singapore and India. The importance lays more on the political rather than operation level, as you find European, African, North- and South American as well as Asian countries and they different religious backgrounds combined in one Organisation. Peru joined T-RMN in 2014.

Maritime Picture (MP)

At this point the term Recognized Maritime Picture (RMP) could be misleading to the operational communities and has to be distinguished from the original definition used in NATO, where each and every contact is evaluated and classified. The available operational picture in the V-RMTC communities is to be understood more as a plain and unclassified Maritime Picture (MP) containing AIS-Data and unclassified information. None of the tracks can contain or indicate classified and evaluated data due to IT-Security so far. V-RMTC provides currently only unclassified Chat-Rooms and Forums within the communities for message exchange. National classified information about a Vessel of Interest (VOI) still will have to be shared on bilateral and secured links – which are not part of the V-RMTC - and then passed into the secured systems for an individual national and truly Recognized Maritime Picture, which enhances the Maritime Security of the participation countries.

Nevertheless, the gained international credibility of the V-RMTC and its capabilities in- and outside the Mediterranean region called for Workshops in order to develop the Wider Mediterranean Community with other countries (such as India, Singapore, Ireland and Mexico and Brazil). They had sent their observers to assess the possibility to establish similar models in their own geographical areas. This interest brought a new dimension overcoming even the concept of the V-RMTC Wider Mediterranean Region. 

A significant experimentation started in July 2008 with the Brazilian and Singapore Navies. Successful tests between the V-RMTC and the Brazilian system, called SISTRAM, were conducted and, due to the flexibility of the model, by the end of September 2008 also with the Navy of Singapore. Different from V-RMTC, the introduction of National Liaison Offices will enable Singapore and the participating Nations to exchange in the future, in addition to the unclassified data, also nationally classified information in case of a crisis. 

Based on V-RMTC Italy has developed the System for Inter-agency Integrated Maritime Security (SIIMS) with additional sensor data from satellite, radar, Vessel Traffic Systems and other sources, making the data and information exchange available to the Carabinieri, Coast Guard, State Police, Custom Police and Customs itself. The total amount of tracks is listed a weekly, monthly and an annual report, send to the participating navies in the individual communities. Since the 2006 edition of the Venice Regional Sea Power Symposium, when the V-RMTC was rolled out for the Wider Mediterranean Community, the exchanged data volume per quarter increased by 700%, in July 2008 the monthly exchanged data volume exceeded a total of 150,000 contacts.

The successful Italian story of V-RMTC continues with the T-RMN and the 8+6 initiative. Providing all services, covering all cost of development and the technical support, the Italian Navy gained status and reputation by hosting the V-RMTC; so to speak with the T-RMN. To share information between Communication and Information Systems (CIS) is no challenge; this is what they are designed for. Challenges are: 

• A truly global community will have the need to be under the umbrella of an international organization. Solutions might be the involvement of the International Maritime Board (IMB) under the United Nations. After all Maritime Security is of vital and global interest.
• Information sharing between countries requires first a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the diplomatic level. A connection between systems and the possibility to share the contained information is primarily depending on national regulations, secondary on the MOU. National Security regulations do not change according to diplomatic agreements. Collecting national information is the basis for national Maritime Security; exchanging this information in a multinational environment the basis for a global Maritime Security.

Service-oriented infrastructure for MARitime Traffic tracking (SMART)

The technical principles of the Virtual Regional Maritime Traffic Centre (V-RMTC) and the coming T-RMN are internet-based access to the data bases and formatted e-mail exchange for messages upon arrival, departure or movement of a ship. Each Maritime Operation Center of the participating Navies connects individually to the Hub located in Rom/Italy. Because most Navies have close ties to the national civilian offices with responsibilities in White Shipping, the information sharing offers a quite wide approach and a huge amount of data. Data access is achieved over the ?V-RMTC WMC WEB Site Portal v.2008? which offers the log-on and the follow-up sub webs with News, Documents, Forums, Chat, Off-Line Database, Computer-based Training (CBT) and Maps for displaying the maritime picture.

The time between the update of the contacts depends on the message delivery sequence of the providing navy; it can range therefore from minutes to several days to no update at all, where after a maximum of 90 days the track will be no longer stored in the database. This is why V-RMTC and a future T-RMN are therefore no networks with a real time maritime picture required for naval operations, but the shared White Shipping picture is an important additional source as for example peace-keeping and anti-piracy missions and the national RMP Management.

The network, depending on Internet’s capacities and connections, provides – on the first stage - unclassified information on merchant shipping consisting of 300 tons or more units using the mandatory Automated Identification System (AIS). Based on the ITU-Recommendation 1371 of the International Standardization Organization the Automated Information System (AIS-Format) contains less data and has a limited capability for military systems used in Maritime Situational Awareness. On the other hand, the huge amount of the data collected raises the operational demands for the use and share. 

The following information will be available as a minimum:

• Ship’s name
• International Call Sign
• Flag
• IMO number
• Arrivals: port of arrival and arrival’s date in ZULU time - port of origin with departure’s date in ZULU time or
• Departures: port of origin with departure’s date in ZULU time - port of destination with the estimated ZULU time and date of arrival or
• Position: in Latitude and Longitude (if underway or at anchor).

The data will be delivered to the V-RMTC via a Client for Merchant Situational Reports (MerSit-Report), both developed and provided at no cost by the Italian Navy. The data is collected at Italian Fleet Headquarter (CINCNAV), making it available to all the participants. The ?AIS-Converter? (IEC 61161/NMEA 0183) is an additional software tool also provided at no cost by the Italian Navy enabling AIS-Data to be collected from different sources and formats for transformation into a MerSit-Report. 

Merchant Vessel Situation (MERSIT)

Data format for information exchange in V-RMTC, "MERSIT is the formatted-message created to exchange the information from the Clients to the Server": 

• MERSIT ARR: to notify a single arrival, at a country port, of one merchant vessel; 
• MERSIT DEP: to notify a single departure, from a country port, of one merchant vessel; 
• MERSIT NAV: to notify the contact of one merchant vessel located at sea. 

Each report is built by one or plus additional MERSIT, and sent via a single Summary to the assigned mailbox of the Data Fusion Hub (DFH). Access to V-RMTC communities and to MerSit-Clients is secured via registered user administration providing password, protected connections and data exchange at CINCNAV/Rome. Bringing more users and therefore more data and information into the V-RMTC creates a demand for a higher level of IT-Security. The second stage of the concept requires therefore some sort of business security level, due to the immense amount of unclassified information in the data bases and the need to share also sensible information in a message exchange. As a consequence, the Italian Navy introduced on the 16th February 2009 new features. 

The technical developments are a new GIS (Geographical Information System) using Open Layers, a new function to allow users to display Latitude and Longitude Grids and a new Tracks management function. As experimental tool a new drop-down menu allows users to manage Tracks and to track ?Vessel-Of-Interest? (VOI). 

For usability and security, a Graphic Management using Dynamic HTML or DOM-scripts (DHTML), offering more functionalities and easier use, Multi-User-Chat- and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-encrypted E-Mail digital certificates as part of Information Security PKI are evolved improvements in V-RMTC/T-RMN.

Today the Service-oriented infrastructure for MARitime Traffic tracking (SMART) is enhancing the V-RMTC by providing the next spiral evolutionary step for the Italian Navy (ITN) Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA). SMART is built upon the standards, strategies, & capabilities of V-RMTC to build & deploy Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) capabilities.

SMART increment 3 is built upon the standards, strategies and capabilities of V-RMTC and SMART increment 1 and 2 systems, to build and deploy a modern and effective ITN Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) capability. SMART will collaborate and interoperate with multiple Navy partners, working within both classified and unclassified environments, for obtaining, sharing and processing data related to Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA) in a single portal.

System takes external data sources (either SOA and traditional) and fuses them under a mediated meta-data layer. This allows for data mining, manual and automated analysis, and various visualization capabilities in a single application. SMART is a near real-time system, the COP is updated as inputs from various sources are received. SMART includes toolsets for collaboration and coordination for interoperability and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) to support MSA systems (i.e. Documents, Forum, Chat, etc. ), view and export the Common Operating Picture (COP).

The SMART FENIX system connects Naval Operational Centers (NOCs) through virtual networks in order to allow the exchange of MSA information through a Data Fusion Hub (DFH). SMART allowed multiple partners to share information on Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA) technology systems within an unclassified environment in near real-time. SMART used external data sources and fused them under a mediated metadata layer that allowed for data mining, manual and automated analysis, and various visualization capabilities within a single application. SMART provided geospatial situational awareness capacities and included toolsets for collaboration and coordination for interoperability and MSA features. SMART has secure encrypted communications channels and encrypted systems passwords. SMART used secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (https) for Internet access and data transfers.

SMART is used in V-RMTC/T-RMN together with AIS (Automatic Identification System), the NATO MSSIS (Maritime Safety and Security Information System), can make use of formatted messages as i.e. the NATO/USA OS OTH-GOLD, Locator, while the MERSIT-Client (MERchant vessels SITuation) can still be used for automatic or manual transformation of the message information on the arrival and departure for feed into the Fusion Hub in the COMMCEN in Santa Rosa, Italy. 

Other protocol used by countries involved in the communities (XML, XCTC, CSV, SISTRAM). Based on the Operational Arrangement (OA) each member of the community is required to send the track data to the Data Fusion Hub (The Italian NOC), which collects the data for use via a web-browser for the community. The authorities in ITA get the information combined with national sensors information.

? Joachim Beckh