VOS Ships: Transition Phase 2007-2008
Naja Arctica
The automation of the observation aboard VOS ships will be pursued. According to the design study, five more BATOS systems will be funded by the programme each year, at least during the transition period. These systems will equip ships plying between Europe and North America (or Greenland) as a matter of priority. By the end of 2008, an average number of 700 automated observations carried out by EUMETNET ship in the EUCOS area every day should be reached.
The results of the evaluation carried out by the Met Office on different AWS should be available by the end of 2007. They will help to inform future E-SURFMAR policy concerning the automation of the ship observations.
New cost-effective communication systems such as Iridium will be evaluated and applied to AWS systems as and when necessary.
Investigations to search savings in communication costs for ships being not equipped with an AWS will continue. The transmission of half compressed messages through Inmarsat-C GMDSS transmitters will be deployed on all EUMETNET VOS ships if the technique appears cost effective. More and more ships are using alternative systems to Inmarsat-C to communicate ashore. It should be possible to also use these systems to report meteorological data but adaptations will be needed.
RV Meteor
The E-SURFMAR Programme Manager recommends the use of generic call signs for VOS - including those which are not equipped with an AWS. This has already been applied to some AWS systems installed on French and UK VOS ships. The first EUCOS funded AWS systems have also generic identifiers in the form of tttccnn where ttt represent the AWS system or the software used aboard, cc is the country code and nn is an increment from 00 to ZZ (1296 possibilities).
The use of generic call signs partially repies to the ship security problem. The correspondence between identifiers and ship’s name will be only known by the operator who recruited the VOS. Among other advantages, we may quote:
- an easy and immediate relay of quality information from monitoring centres to ship operators without any knowledge of WMO Pub 47 (metadata table);
- the possibility to easily compute performances for categories of VOS, countries of recruitment, type of AWS, etc;
- an assistance for the computation of E-SURFMAR compensations according to the number of reports sent onto the GTS.
In 2004, a budget line – called “Development of the VOS” – was proposed by the design study “to improve existing AWS systems and to develop new techniques to save communication costs”. This was agreed and a part of the sums available for 2005 and 2006 served:
- to upgrade the BATOS system in order it could be used by any participants (translation of the documentation and of the interface in English, transmission of compressed data through Inmarsat-C);
- to organize the visit of a French ship equipped with a BATOS system (Portsmouth, October 2005);
- to prepare and to test eight E-SURFMAR funded BATOS systems (500 € per unit);
- to adapt and to test the Iridium communication system on BATOS (ongoing work).
RV Aegaeo
In the future, this budget line could serve:
- to organise a workshop on the installation of AWS systems (e.g. training on BATOS);
- to pay any extra-costs incurred by DWD to make the German VOS metadata database available to all E-SURFMAR participants;
- to improve the TurboWin software, e.g. by adding more supportive add-ons: climatological information (charts, tables…), training modules, facilities to receive forecasts, collection of additional meta data for Pub 47;
- to promote VOS activities within mariners and, in general, any activity the VOS-TAG will judge useful.
The E-SURFMAR Programme Manager will continue to actively participate in the JCOMM/SOT and PMO meetings. The programme is concerned by the collection of metadata, the harmonising of PMO practices (electronic logbooks, software installations, inspection forms), the communication costs, the VOSClim recruitment, the standardisation of the instruments, the ship security issues, the training of PMOs, etc.