Page 28: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2013)

28 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? NOVEMBER 2013 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY e-ComplianceCommercial seaborne shipping is regulated by international, EU and national authorities and is subject to a number of commercially oriented constraints. The long history and large number of organizations associated with regulation has led to a high level of complexity in managing the development of regula-tions, their implementation by transport operators, and their enforcement by authorities. The complexity of the situ- ation is further aggravated by the long lifetime of ships, the different phases of ship operations, the number of parties in the operation and the interests of other stakeholders. From a business perspective, ship-ping companies spend a large amount of resources collecting new and updated regulations each year. In addition to the cost, they often remain unsure that their system is up-to-date and that authorities in different ports agree with their inter- pretation of the regulations. e-Compliance, a project launched re-cently by the European Commission, aims to unify regulatory information available to stakeholders, co-ordinate regulatory actions and as a consequence, reduce the burden of multiple regula-tory sources. For this purpose, it will utilise semantic technologies to produce machine-readable regulations within an electronically accessible Maritime Reg-ulations Digital Library. It will incorpo- rate over 10,000 Regulations, covering at least Þ ve different areas, including safety, environment, piloting, waste etc. This will cover regulations from at least Þ ve different sources including Europe, Ports, ClassiÞ cation, Maritime Authori- ties and the IMO. e-Compliance will build on a number of previous European Research proj-ects and private initiatives. The FLAG- SHIP project demonstrated a consider- able simpliÞ cation in the management of maritime regulations on board a ship which was based on an advanced seman-tic search mechanism applied on select-ed sets of rules and regulations. Further- more, the MARNIS project speciÞ ed all EU directives and interrelations/information ß ows, the SKEMA project investigated the eMaritime application to regulations management and the e-Freight project has developed a proto-type Next Generation Single Window dealing speciÞ cally with the new Ship Formalities directive. The e-Compliance project will also seek to integrate other private initiatives into the framework. This includes vol- untary systems such as Tanker Manage- ment and Self-Assessment (TMSA) and Shipping KPI (SKPI), as well as vetting systems and ship classiÞ cation regimes. All developments will complement and be kept closely aligned with the e-Mar- itime programme and particularly the eMAR project.SpeciÞ c activities within the project will include the establishment of a coop-eration model between regulation setting and enforcement authorities, both for port state control and IMO regulations, for modelling and interpreting regula-tions and ensuring harmonisation across national and organisational boundaries. The resulting seamless co-operation be-tween the different stakeholder groups will improve the effectiveness of regu- lations and reduce the burden on practi-tioners who work with maritime regula-tions on a daily basis. Demonstration of automated com-pliance management will be possible through the modelling and delivery of regulations in electronic format, as well as harmonised e-Services for more effec- tive and co-ordinated enforcement con-trols and inspections. In addition, e-Ser- vices in support of class requirements, particularly on surveys and for ship risk management in upgraded e-Maritime ap-plications, will be used. An evaluation of the practical implementation of the above in representative networks and the provision of recommendations for e-Maritime policies will also be under- taken. To this end, the project will cre- ate virtual systems which address the speciÞ c needs of stakeholders. For the port community a feasibility study and business case analysis will be carried out to look at the possible integration of Port Community Systems (PCS) and Na-tional Single Windows. The vision is to create one virtual port of Europe for the sharing of compliance data and logistics information. This activity will consider the different stakeholder requirements, identify potential barriers and demon-strate the beneÞ ts of sharing compliance data via PCS. The analysis will also take into account the role of smaller ports that do not currently have a PCS and advise on how these ports can be integrated into a wider European virtual port system. Consultation with the European Port Community Systems Association will play a key role in supporting this activ-ity. Once developed, the system will be tested in more detail for the ports of Bar- celona and Marseille in particular, us- ing the port of Rotterdam for validation. The main stakeholders that will beneÞ t from such a system will be the declaring Revolutionizing the EfÞ ciency of Compliance for Maritime Regs Philipp Lohrmann studied physics at the Uni-versity of Bonn, Germany. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Kings Col- lege London in 2007. Since joining BMT Group?s R&D team in 2010, he has been working on several European research projects on ship safety, robotics and supply chain security. e: [email protected] The Quagmire of Maritime Regulations The Quagmire of Maritime Regulations MR #11 (26-33).indd 28MR #11 (26-33).indd 2811/11/2013 11:43:11 AM11/11/2013 11:43:11 AM