Fig. 6 Picture of the test equipment for a ship
Fig. 7 Picture of the test equipment for a trailer truck
The main item and result of the filed test are as follows.
(1) Management efficiency of ships and trucks
Table 2 shows the comparison of expended hours time data in order to do to the communicating between the truck drivers and vehicle management system operators. We could confirm that the expended hours are shorter when using of this system than hours by conventional method.
(2) Availability of GIS
The result of a questionnaire given to the users, we confirmed that the monitoring of the mobile's position by the overlaid display is much faster than the one by conventional procedures, by FAX and telephone. Also, the field test result show that the monitoring by digital map is very useful for users and expedite confirmation of mobile's position.
Table 2. The comparison timetable of information transmission task
6. CONCLUSION
We found that this system can be used as practical level through the field test. The satellite packet communication service for domestic ship's radiotelephone system has been started from April 2000, so this system can be introduced for domestic ship and truck now.
For the practical application of this system for ships and trucks, key factor are the lower cost communication, and more reinforced data security system. The data communication cost can be reduced and can be controlled by using the latest packet data communication service, so data communication cost will become reasonable to system users. The network security can be realized economically by using the commercial firewall system at reasonable cost level.
We are expecting that the system will realize the reduction of manpower of ships and vehicles management works. In the near future, we are going to expand this system for the management of working vessels in harbor and management of vessel traffic, etc,
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This system was developed by a consortium (NTT DoCoMo, Kyowa marine transportation, Kuribayashi Steamship, Nippon Tanker, Mitsubishi Research Institute and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) that was adopted as one of 13 themes named "GIS Model Project of Next Generation" offered by Database Promotion Center (DPC) committed from Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA). The author expresses sincere thanks to all the members concerned.
8. REFERENCE
[1] Numano, M., Matsuda. K., "Navigation Support System", TECHNO MARINE, Vol.799 (1996), p8
[2] Koyama, T., "Status and View of WebPilot", KAIUN, Vol.869 (2000), p21
[3] Naito, Y., "Subject of Modal Shift", TECHNO MARINE, Vol.841 (1999), p498
[4] Kato, K., " View of Modal Shift for Marine Transportation", TECHNO MARINE, Vol.841 (1999), p502
