CLASSIFICATION society DNV has announced the launch of a new service designed to enable better performance and safety of navigational systems.
DNV said it developed NAUTConnect in collaboration with the maritime industry as an additional, voluntary class notation.
NAUTConnect is described as a continuous remote complicance verification system for electronic navigational systems and integrated network equipment.
It covers onboard systems and data collection infrastructure, onshore systems and data standards, as well as procedures for compliance verification.
DNV said the new service was also designed to help vessel owners and managers to keep track of hardware and software updates and replacements.
“As the era of ship connectivity progresses and systems become more deeply integrated, we need to focus on increasing harmonisation and creating processes and services that will help to reap the safety and efficiency benefits of e-navigation,” DNV Maritime technical director Geir Dugstad said.
He said DNV worked with navigation systems manufacturer Kongsberg Maritime, its digital arm Kongsberg Digital on the service, which has so far received positive feedback.
Norway’s Hurtigruten Coastal AS was reportedly one of several shipowners that piloted the service, testing and evaluating the system on Hurtigruten Coastal Express ro-ro/passenger ship MS Polarlys.
“As we go forward, we are looking into covering additional functions, such as communication and control systems in addition to navigation, as we continue to work with system and data collection vendors, and continue to scale up our continuous, automated, and data-driven solutions,” Mr Dugstad said.
Kongsberg Maritime principal engineer Gudbrand Strømmen said the NAUTConnect initiative has made system data available to end users and has provided shoreside users with better insight into system status and performance.
“It has also provided us with an incentive to standardise our reporting of key system parameters, and by using NAUTConnect as an industry standard has enabled us to improve access to this information from systems delivered by our sub-suppliers,” he said.
And Hurtigruten Coastal managing director Gerry Larsson-Fedde said the company saw the value of continuous, automated and data-driven services providing better insights into operations.
“At Hurtigruten we use navigational systems vendors across our fleet and are looking forward to DNV extending the development to more manufacturers so that we can run this on all our ships, not only the ones equipped with KM bridge systems,” Mr Larsson-Fedde said.
DNV said NAUTConnect builds on the International Maritime Organization’s e-navigation strategy, which focuses on harmonising ship-to-shore information exchange.
