Further reflecting the progress that has been made in reducing the danger of piracy off the east coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean, the shipping industry plans to formally end the “High Risk Area,” designation as of the first of the year. While a level of risk remains, they highlight that there have been no boardings in nearly four years with the last reports coming in 2019 of pirates being scared away by EU forces after menacing a vessel near the Horn of Africa.

The official notification of the plan to end the designation was submitted to the International Maritime Organization, today, August 22, to be reviewed and approved at the next meeting of the Maritime Safety Committee scheduled to start on October 31. 2022. The decision to end the designation was made by the International Chamber of Shipping, BIMCO, International Marine Contractors Association, INTERCARGO, INTERTANKO, and the Oil Companies International Marine Forum.

“This announcement is a testament to nearly 15 years of dedicated collaboration to reduce the threat of piracy in the Indian Ocean. Through a combination of efforts by military, political, civil society, and the shipping industry over the years, operators and seafarers are now able to operate with increased confidence in these waters,” the groups said in their joint statement to the IMO.

The designation of the region as a High Risk Area began in 2010 near the peak of the attacks on ships near the Horn of Africa. Two years earlier, the Council of the European Union adopted an action plan based on UN resolutions, to establish the executive EU military maritime operation for Somalia. Known as Operation ATALANTA, the mission was the deterrence, prevention, and repression of acts of piracy and armed robbery off the Somali coast.

At the height of Somali piracy in January 2011, EU Naval Force – Somalia reports there were 736 hostages and 32 ships being held by pirates. The combined efforts contributed to a reduction in activity so that two years later they were able to report that there had been no successful hijackings of a commercial vessel and the last confirmed attack on a vessel came in 2018. EU NavFor reported that it chased away a small boat in 2019 but Iran has continued to report that its navy has intervened in recent attacks. The EU mission was extended in 2020 to continue to patrol the waters and specifically to protect commercial ships in the World Food Program and others that might be vulnerable to attack. EU NavFor’s mandate is currently scheduled to end on December 31, 2022.

The removal of the HRA reflects a significantly improved piracy situation in the region, said the organizations. A year ago, they had reduced the size of the designated region, but they said today the end of the designation would not come till year’s end allowing charterers, shipowners, and operators time to adapt to the changed threat from piracy. The groups continue to warn, however, that threat and risk assessments should still be carried out and ships are still encouraged to report to the UKMTO and register with the Maritime Security Centre for the Horn of Africa under the Voluntary Reporting Area administered by UKMTO.

Late in 2021, the UN Security Council began efforts to scale back and end the international programs in the region. As late as March 2022, the EU expressed, however, concern over ending the program while there remains political unrest in Somalia.
Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/indian-ocean-high-risk-designation-to-be-withdrawn-at-end-of-2022

As many will already know, S-100 is the new International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Universal Hydrographic Data Model. Profiled from the ISO 19100 series of Geographic Information Standards and a much broader foundation to eventually replace the existing IHO S-57 standard, S-100 has been designed to quickly and easily be extended to better accommodate digital hydrographic data exchange and other future technological and navigational developments.

S-100 now supports imagery and gridded data, high-density bathymetry, and dynamic under keel clearance management in ECDIS, in addition to many other maritime data applications. Thanks to this, the standard will enrich the next generation of data products for hydrographic, maritime shipping, and geographic information system communities.

In a navigation context, S-100 will enable improved safety of life at sea functions and promote enhanced situational awareness through the provision of a richer granularity of bathymetric data, in combination with tidal height data, which will dynamically adjust depth in ECDIS. From a navigational perspective, what this means is that numerous different digital data sets and overlays will be available to bridge teams to enhance all stages of the passage planning and execution process.

In the future, digital layers will replace multiple nautical publications, which in combination with weather forecasting will support enhanced passage optimization and Just-In-Time arrival. Whilst S-100 in its current guise is designed for humans to read and interpret on an ECDIS, because S-100 standards are fully extensible it can accommodate future requirements that may arise through developments in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS).

The future digital data products being designed for MASS will look very different from those used today in ECDIS, as ENC data is very deliberately designed, filtered, and managed to avoid overwhelming the user with too much information. This helps to give the mariner only the correct information needed to support safe navigation decisions. However, in the future, MASS systems will be capable of handling very large, complex data sets which are not intended for mariners and other end users to visually interpret. This will present new, and exciting, challenges linked to data formats and delivery of new MASS navigation products.

Steering the development of the S-100 standard for MASS

Through our work with the MASS community, the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) recognised the need to ensure that the S-100 standard caters for both crewed and uncrewed shipping so a common situational awareness and navigation picture can be used across both types of vessel.

We presented this case to understand the requirements for MASS navigation to the IHO. The organization has established a Project Team with a two-year remit to identify and prioritize MASS navigation requirements, analyze the impact on the S-100 hydrographic standards and services, and develop a set of recommendations to be addressed by existing Working Groups.

Chaired by the UKHO, the Project Team has membership from Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Iran, Japan, Norway, Rep of Korea, Sweden, UK, US, Singapore & Malta. The Project Team has concluded a discovery phase which involved engaging with MASS builders, operators, and system integrators around the globe to understand the challenges the industry face with navigation from a traditional product or service perspective. This resulted in 45 new requirements for MASS navigation that will now be examined against each S-100 standard to identify if the requirement has been met in the development of S-100, or if there is a gap in the individual standards. If gaps are identified, the project team will make a number of recommendations to the relevant Working Groups to address the gap, thereby future proofing S-100 for MASS navigation.

Mayflower Autonomous Ship – practical application of S-100 for MASS

As part of its work investigating MASS navigation requirements and specifically how S-100 may address them, the UKHO has been working closely with Marine AI, the team that built the navigation systems used in the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project based in Plymouth, UK.

When Mayflower set sail across the Atlantic on 28 April 2022, the vessel navigated out of Plymouth Sound using UKHO S-100 data, a world-first for a fully autonomous vessel and S-100. We then conducted experiments to look at how S-101 (ENC), S-102 (gridded bathymetry), S-104 (gridded surface water levels), and S-111 (gridded surface currents) could be used to safely sail an autonomous vessel.

The S-100 data was loaded into the Mayflower’s chart data server, which allows the autonomy modules to extract relevant information and make navigation decisions. The combined S-102 and S-104 data allowed the Mayflower to easily obtain temporal-based water depth information and generate ‘no go’ areas. The S-111 data proved essential in restricted and dynamic water space, such as the Cattewater and the narrows leading into the river Tamar. Overall, the S-100 data sets increased reliability and data quality – specifically related to depth sampling – and resulted in significant computational cost savings using S-101 over S-57.

The bigger picture

As a complete series, S-100 promises to bring new opportunities for day-to-day shipping operations, generating the potential for safer, more sustainable, and more prosperous trade. At the same time, more accurate, harmonious data will improve decision-making in passage planning, vessel operations, and support, and overall ‘smart steaming’ by taking advantage of prevailing conditions such as tides, weather, and port infrastructure – including the availability and readiness of berths, pilots, and tugs. This is how S-100 will enable more refined voyage optimization and Just-In-Time arrival, playing a pivotal role in supporting global shipping decarbonization goals.

These exciting advancements in S-100 will be instrumental in improving marine navigational data and the products and solutions that shipping companies, mariners, and ports will use in their operations in the future.

Source: https://maritime-executive.com/features/data-standard-brings-enhanced-safety-and-commercial-opportunities