The impact of "Transponders" on the efficiency of ship
operation is given by a reduction of workload on the ship and better communication at the
ship/port interface, mainly due to
- Automatic ship reporting;
- Automatic entrance into the VTS system;
- Automatic transmission of ship's actual navigational data (position
etc.)
- Automatic acquisition and display of all involved ships;
- Preparation of decision making to take proper action.
The impact on ship operation depends on the type of use. The automatic
broadcast mode is much more efficient than the interrogation mode. If, effectively, only
ship-to- shore communication within VTS can be applied, the transponder will make the VTS
more effective. However, there is hardly any direct support for ship operation because the
ship, itself, has to do the task to report its entrance into the VTS. The full benefit of
"Transponders" can only be achieved in the continuous, automatic and autonomous
broadcast mode.
On a long term run, it may well be that the impact of
"Transponders" will become even much more important. For example, the knowledge
of identification, port of destination etc. of all other ships may lead to a revision of
CollReg and to computer-assisted and potentially even automatically executed collision
avoidance manoeuvres.
8. The Impact on Manning
8.1 Reduction of Workload
The reduction of workload has been discussed as part of the impact on
efficiency of ship operation. There is hardly any extra workload by the use of
"Transponders".
8.2 Remaining Human Operations
a) Selecting and setting data to be transmitted
Whereas most data to be transmitted are provided automatically by
integrated sensors or the ship's data management system, some data have to be selected
individually and put into the "Transponder" system, e.g. port of destination,
ETA, status of ship ("not-under-command"; "fishing"; ...) etc..
