The role of the European maritime simulator network in assessing dynamic sea traffic management principles

The MONALISA 2.0 (ML 2.0) project aims to define the Sea Traffic Management concept (STM), where information is shared amongst all stakeholders in the maritime transport chain, including nautical officers, ports, administrations, etc. Thus, a communication and information centered approach for data exchange by System Wide Information Management principles changing from surface-based- to voyage-based operations has been proposed. Amongst others, testing and verifying the feasibility and benefits of STM and its solutions shall be done in the European Maritime Simulator Network (EMSN), a macro simulation environment for ship handling simulators. This is an open IEEE 1278 standard network protocol enabling interactive communication between distributed simulation environments. Based on an introduction into ML 2.0, the proposed STM concept is introduced, its expected impacts are listed and Key Performance Objectives are derived. The backgrounds on the EMSN are given and it is shown how it can assist in assessing the impact of STM's Key Performance Indicators.