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Cases

Learn how customers use the solutions to maximize profitability. Below you find a short description of a few of the projects we have implemented.

TELE Greenland Case Story

Proactive Protection of Sub-sea Cables

“We can now identify and document perpetrators which is undeniable proof in insurance lawsuits. This has already resulted in compensations for millions. ” – Bo G. Christensen, Project Manager, TELE Greenland

The challenges
Sub-sea telecommunication cables constitute a critical part of national and transnational communication networks and infrastructures. Despite regulation of traffic and activities in protection zones around cable infrastructures and clear markings on navigational charts, damages caused by vessels occur – e.g. inflicted by bottom trawling or anchors which pose substantial threats to the integrity and expected or residual life time of the cables. The economical and societal consequences can be significant for TELE Greenland as well as the end users of their services.

The solutions
Event detection algorithms developed by GateHouse Maritime enable zone-specific detection of sea level events with probability of interference on the structural integrity of the sub-sea power and telecommunication cable infrastructures. Vessels approaching and entering the protection zones are automatically notified and warned, by message on display or by SMS/email, in case they show evidence of contingency or potentially violating behaviour. These timely warnings are a valuable tool for prevention of damages. Furthermore TELE Greenland is now able to easily identify and document perpetrators in relation to breakages on their sub-sea cables.

Dan Pilot

Reliable ETAs and Valuable Statistics – DanPilot optimizes efficiency

DanPilot handles the public pilotage through Danish territorial waters from any destination in Denmark to all ports in the Baltic Sea. As the unique full-service provider in Denmark DanPilot offers pilotage to all Danish ports as well.

As many other maritime operators, DanPilot has often experienced imprecise and practically unusable ETA calculations. This has meant many man-hours spent on checking, and double-checking, the ETAs and unnecessary waiting time due to the imprecise data. Pilots often had to sail further than necessary with a customer ship, because DanPilot lacked precise information on ETAs for manually defined points at sea. Another challenge DanPilot had was how to optimize sailing routes and thereby their time at sea. With limited data on historical tracks, and no statistics on these data, optimizing sailing routes was based on manual calculations. This made planning of sailing routes a time consuming task.

By automatically calculating ETAs for defined points at sea, DanPilot is now able to optimize the pilots’ time at sea. They spend less time checking the ships for updated ETAs and the reliability of the ETAs simply enable them to service more ships in less time than before. Use of the near-miss functionality also enables DanPilot to produce detailed documentation of e.g. a day’s operations. By having statistics, such as historical data of sailing routes, planning of routes is no longer based on manual operations. Historical tracks and visual statistics enable easy planning and optimization of routes.

Marine Exchange of Alaska

AIS covering a 3000-mile long shoreline

The Marine Exchange of Alaska provides AIS coverage of Alaska’s enormous and harsh waters through their installation and operation of over 30 AIS sites (shore stations).

For the Marine Exchange of Alaska GateHouse has provided a complete server system with advanced statistics for analytical purposes, a WebGAD for access to the AIS data over the internet, a GAD for local display and configuration. The Marine Exchange also uses the GateHouse system to provide AIS data for external users as a service provider.

Executive Director of The Marine Exchange of Alaska, Captain Ed Page says: “Our AIS system has to date, and will in the future play an important role in saving lives and property as well as protecting Alaska’s fragile marine environment. With the stakes so high, it is important we have a reliable, versatile AIS management and display system. After testing over a dozen AIS systems, we found GateHouse best meets our challenging needs, and therefore decided to use GateHouse to manage our system and display AIS data. The technical abilities and responsiveness displayed by the Gatehouse staff and the versatility of the software has impressed me and my staff.”

Port of Aarhus

Port of Aarhus saves with GateHouse AIS solution

With accurate information on vessel position, the port is able to better schedule its labour ressources and reduce costs.

Port of Aarhus had the GateHouse AIS Port Solutions put into operation in 2006. The solution establishes a link from the sea to the port community, In this way, the port management receives alerts if vessels planned for berths are delayed, and the port management can communicate information about the delay to all the terminal operators and shore men in the port. Moreover, Port of Aarhus is also able to allocate the pilots and tugboat resources much netter than before.

The system provides another advantage. In case of incidents caused by vessels, resulting in damaged buoys or wharfs, the port will know exactly which vessel has caused the damage and consequently who is responsible. Previously it was not always easy to recover damages.

Danish Maritime Authority

Situational awareness and valuable data improving maritime safety

The Danish Maritime Authority has one of the most advanced maritime monitoring systems in the world. GateHouse is part of the explanation.

The AIS solution at DMA (Danish Maritime Authority) connects shore stations and transponders (18 shore stations scattered along the coastal line, 2 installed on offshore production platforms in the North Sea and a large number of transponders in harbours) in a network with the control center at DMA.

Information from the Danish AIS system is automatically distributed to a range of stakeholders. The distribution is secure and it allows the information to be filtered according to the needs of the stakeholders. Data is distributed to Navy, Danish VTS centers, harbours and international maritime cooperations.

One of the advantages to DMA is the increased situational awareness. The solution allows DMA to act immediately on incidents to secure navigational safety. If a collision or accident occurs DMA can immediately put up virtual marks on the sea charts to warn all near vessels or contact them directly with an AIS message.

Irish Coast Guard

Main contractor for the Irish National AIS

GateHouse delivered a complete national AIS solution covering 16 base station sites around the Irish coast, 1 server centre and 3 control centres.

GateHouse has delivered and commissioned the complete AIS solution for the Irish Coast Guard using GateHouse’s state-of-the-art software. The solution was supplied in cooperation with GateHouse’s Irish partner, Martek, who handled the installation, training and support in the Republic of Ireland.

The first step involved the supply of all hardware including 16 remote sites 6 weeks after contract go-ahead. The development of unique software features for the Irish Coast Guard and the installation of all hardware started in 2007 and the complete system was delivered and commissioned by mid September 2007.

Several features distinct to the Irish system were developed during the project in order to fulfil the requirements of the Irish Coast Guard. To mention a few:

  • Collision WatchDog
  • Message routing from vessels to a particular control centre
  • Single hull tanker handling. Lists of additional attributes for ships can be added to the system. This information can be used for filtering or in setting up WatchDogs
  • Support for multiple display units on the same operator machine
  • Redundant monitoring

Helcom

Exchanging AIS data between countries

Countries can easilty connect to the HELCOM server and provide or subscribe real-time data.

In the HELCOM project GateHouse has delivered a complete system for exchanging AIS data between all the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea and Norway . The countries send data from their national AIS system to the central server in Copenhagen. Additionally, GateHouse has developed 2 proxy applications that each of the countries can use to connect easily to the HELCOM server and provide/subscribe real-time data. This design has made it very easy for each of the countries to use the HELCOM system, because the proxy applications take care of encryption, user validation, fail over, data filtering, data fusion, down sampling etc.

The data received by each country is filtered in a way that the countries only receive the data they are interested in receiving. The filtering can be configured only to forward data depending on which country supplied the data, the ship’s geographical location, the message types, update interval, etc.

The data received from the countries is stored in a large Oracle database. Statistical reports generated from the data are made available to users via a web interface. The statistics are based on passage lines, e.g. it is possible to see how many ships pass beneath the Great Belt Bridge in each direction and in total. Literally, any kind of filtering can be applied to the result (type of ship, draught etc.)

HELCOM is an intergovernmental organisation of the nine Baltic coastal countries and the EU, protecting the marine environment from all sources of pollution.