Mobile applications, cloud and bigdata on ships and shore stations for increased safety on marine traffic; a smart ship project

Today, hundreds of vessels are lost every year with high economical costs, major environmental impacts and unfortunately the loss of lives. This review shows current technologies used on ships and shore stations to avoid wrecks, collisions and contacts between ships. It is also presented that these technologies are not enough to prevent the actual number of maritime accidents. Therefore, governments, naval industry, captains, vessel traffic centers, harbors, search and rescue forces need better tools to prevent accidents and increase safety at sea. On this paper, new smart technologies on vessels and the use of cloud, bigdata and analytic/cognitive real time process are presented as new intelligent tools to improve the safety of sailors. Ships using these technologies are so called Smart Ships. Finally, it is also shown the architecture, initial tests and developments of a novel smart ship project that uses this new approach focused on AIS technology.