Carnival connects entire fleet to STM
As part of the Sea Traffic Management STM Validation project Costa Crociere, part of Carnival Corporation, integrated Costa and Aida ships to exchange information with other actors, utilizing STM supported standardised formats and interfaces. After verifying operations with these initial ships, the rest of the Carnival Corporation fleet has now been added.
Costa developed STM support as part of their Fleet Operation Center software Neptune. This new functionality in Neptune allows Carnival to interact with other STM services, ports and shore center operators, and to evaluate voyage optimization suggestions received by shore centers through the maritime digital infrastructure. As part of the setup Carnival ships share their voyage plan automatically with Vessel Traffic Services along the route.
“Carnival’s advanced Fleet Operation Center 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”, says STM testbed manager Björn Andreasson.
“With our Fleet Operation Centres we have further increased safety on-board our ships and with STM we can use 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”, says Franco Caraffi, IT Director Carnival Maritime, part of Information Technology Costa Group.
The STM Validation project goal was to provide STM functionality to 300 ships but with the entire Carnival fleet, the figure is now almost 400 ships. The other ships have been equipped by Wärtsilä Voyage, Furuno and Adveto, as an integrated part of their ECDIS.