After trialling the solutions developed by the Sea Traffic Management (STM) project on-board the ships of its Costa and Aida brands, the corporation's entire fleet is now using them.

The goal of the STM initiative is to provide the shipping and port industries with a maritime digital infrastructure, thanks to which different actors can talk to each other using standardised formats and interfaces.

Costa Crociere, part of the Carnival Corporation, has embedded STM solutions into its Neptune guidance system, a tool used by Carnival's Fleet Operations Centres to help monitor its global fleet. The new functionality not only allows Carnival to interact with other STM services, ports, and shore operators, but also to evaluate the voyage optimisation suggestions received by shore centres through the maritime digital infrastructure. As part of the setup, Carnival ships share their voyage plan automatically with Vessel Traffic Services along the route.

"With our Fleet Operation Centres we have further increased safety on-board our ships and with STM we can use the solution to share voyage plans with all other STM enabled services such as route optimization and Vessel Traffic Services to create a shared situational awareness," Franco Caraffi, IT Director Carnival Maritime, highlighted.

Björn Andreasson, Testbed Manager, STM, added, "Carnival's advanced Fleet Operation Centre is a good example of how a proprietary eco-system can be connected to interact with external services via STM. Costa's contributions in bringing STM forward are most valuable to the project and to the maritime industry at large."

The validation part of the STM project has intended to provide STM functionality to 300 ships. With the addition of the entire Carnival fleet, the figure has already reached almost 400 vessels.

Photo: Sea Traffic Management