Dude, you can get YouTube on the ECDIS!

High-speed Internet connectivity on merchant ships and unintended consequences

By Ryan Skinner (email)

"That's right, I can totally get Pandora.com on this bad boy. Let's rock!" 

Since early this year, ships running at least one make of ECDIS can download navigational charts and chart updates at sea, via Internet download. OK, last year's wreck won't show up on ENC updates from hydrographic offices for another two or three years yet anyway, but this is progress, damnit. Don't question it.

DNV's OK'd it, as well. They will type-approve an ECDIS that uses Internet connections for updates, provided a) there is a firewall, b) there is an anti-virus strategy, and c) there is an electrical Internet kill switch. Of course, all of this assumes that the greatest threat is from outside.

I've heard from more than one source that this is not the case. One major shipping company had an ECDIS crash because the officers were using it to surf the Internet while en route (perhaps they were studying the company's HSE policy online). The fuming manager said that they would fix this by allowing the machine to access only one url, that of the chart update provider.

Is it a shock to imagine an officer bored out of his mind jimmying the ECDIS to serve him YouTube videos? To me it wouldn't even be a shock to hear that the flight crew of an airliner overflew their destination because they were tweeting about Justin Bieber. Better that than arguing about airline policy.

There's a fear of technology at work here. It's the same kind of thing that led employers ten years ago to hesitate to give their office workers Internet access. It's alive today when they cut off access to YouTube, Facebook or Skype (I was told by one executive that his company wouldn't let him use the last one because "it's free and it works, unlike our enterprise solution.")

Hell, give seafarers Internet connections broader than the New Jersey turnpike, if they want. If they can't pull it up on the ECDIS, you can be sure they're going to pipe it into their iPhones or Androids. The fact is this: They might be looking at porn and strike a bridge. They might also access countless tools to make them even better and more accountable officers. The Internet doesn't kill people (OK, sometimes it does).

The fellow running the IMO's e-Navigation working groups told me they're putting the focus on what they call a "single window". Let's not split hairs here; that's the ECDIS. This window's going to be full of good stuff, and soon. And it'll be up to every mariner to use it as he likes. In fact, I hope that seafarers come equipped with their own system in the future (like Norwegian pilots).

Imagine when a master can just show up with her ECDIS under her arm, plug into any ship and she has everything in the digital and physical world she needs, right there. A reality, you think?

Comments

[John Stone]

Ryan,
An interesting post.

Is an ECDIS system that is connected to the "open" INTERNET without type approval (i.e. DNV's as mentioned) still in ECDIS mode?

I would believe that it would simply revert to bog-standard ECS - meaning primary navigation would need to be paper charts?

[Ryan]

If it's a type-approved ECDIS to begin with, and you're using ENCs (as required), then it's an ECDIS no matter what you're doing with it, I suppose. A type-approved ECDIS only becomes an ECS if you're not using ENCs. You'd have to double-check that with class or a flag, but that's how I would understand it.

[Barista Uno]

Is this an instance of technology combining business and pleasure, the official and the personal? And what would be the practical implications?

[John Doe]

An easy solution would be to have ECDIS run in full screen mode. Don't support switching to another shell or task. Neither with mouse nor with keyboard. (It is possible to block + and ++, you know.) Internet updates can only be accessed through the internal functionality of the ECDIS. Don't have Flash or such be installed.
The manufacturers of ECDIS can prevent the system being used for anything else but navigating the vessel.

[John Doe]

Addition to my comment:
Where it says + and ++ it should read
Alt+Tab and Alt+Ctrl+Del

[Steven Jones]

The more things change the more they stay the same. I believe that Captain Smith was perusing a particularly saucy telegram at the time of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.