Enabling MASS Technologies

The emergence of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) represents a unique opportunity in terms of instrumentation and collaborative hydrospatial data acquisition techniques. This project aims to exploit Trusted Collaborative Bathymetric Acquisition (TCSB) techniques to build an operational framework to facilitate the implementation of MASS technologies.

CIDCO is building on the concept of participatory bathymetric data collection, using the opportunity of commercial vessels, by equipping large vessels with bathymetric data loggers and installing data transfer stations at strategic locations (figure 1). A prime example of the use of such technologies in the St. Lawrence Seaway. The requirement of up-to-date safe navigable depth in the St. Lawrence Seaway can be fulfilled by allowing raw data to be automatically collected from ships and sent to a data processing cloud that transforms raw bathymetric data into quality products suitable for active monitoring of the St. Lawrence Seaway. This data can also further be integrated into Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) and International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) data products and services. The first vessel to be equipped with this system is the Bella Desgagnés, a passenger transport and supply ship for the lower North Shore owned and operated by Relais Nordik inc. (Figure 2). This system makes it possible, in real time when the ship is in areas covered by a cellular network, to retrieve the ship's bathymetric data and send it to the cloud.