Introduction
The automatic identification system (AIS) is a popular tracking method used by almost every maritime stakeholder across the world. It helps the vessel to broadcast its location to all its stakeholders using a VHF radio transmission. The location of the ship is also sent to vessel traffic service stations, terrestrial, and satellite receivers. According to the international maritime organization, it is mandatory for vessels over 300 gross tons or any passenger ship to have a working unit of AIS at all times.
How is the AIS Marine tracker useful?
It’s always better to have an abundance of information in your toolkit, especially when managing a vessel. Whether AIS is embedded in the vessel itself or used on the shore, AIS has the exact data about the vessel’s time, speed, location, course, arrival, and departure. It can handle a fleet of vessels in real-time with equal efficiency. When a maritime stakeholder uses the automatic identification system along with radar tracking, it aids in decision-making.
As a result, it can predict the course of the vessel and forecast the route with proper analysis. It has been used for more than a decade to bring optimization in maritime stakeholders’ businesses.
Some features to look forward to
Some features make the use of the system more convenient and practical at the same. The following are the features to ensure in your AIS marine tracker.
- Information filter
A message filter evaluates the importance of a particular message that contains some data. It filters out the messages that you don’t want to see and notify you about the ones that are important. For example, you can fill in the specifications regarding the vessel type, departure, and arrival time and length to receive precise information about it. It eliminates the analysis of cluttery information.
- Fleet Management and tracking
As mentioned above, the AIS marine tracker can manage the whole fleet simultaneously. It’s very similar to the information filter. You can choose the vessel in the fleet you wish to be informed about. The only prerequisite is that you can easily differentiate between the vessel of your own fleet by color and/or other bases.
- Alerts
The user must be able to set alerts based on vessel movement, direction, user zones, etc. For example, if your fleet has to stay within a radius of 10 kilometers, the feature will straightway alert the user if the prerequisite is breached.
- Processing historical information
Any AIS marine tracker must be able to analyze, collect, process, and historical data. It makes the whole system data-driven that isn’t based on just intuitions. Millions of records can help you make decisions for future project planning, route forecasting, predicting behavior, demurrage validation, and a lot more.
- Satellite capabilities
The AIS marine tracker must have satellite capabilities to function in remote areas of the world. It is the need of the hour as more and more satellites are being dispatched into the orbit, reducing the lag between pollution reports substantially.