Consortium for the Maritime Connectivity Platform

the Copenhagen University announced the launch of the consortium for the Maritime Connectivity Platform (MCC) established on February 8, 2019, with a signing ceremony at the international e-navigation conference 2019.

The maritime connectivity platform (MCP) is an open source technology for maritime digital domains. It brings common Internet standards to navigation systems and maritime transport. MCP enables infrastructures for an efficient, secure, reliable and continuous electronic exchange of information between maritime interest groups that use the available communication systems. MCP is an open source and vendor-neutral technology.

The MCP has been evolving for several years: around 2015, the development intensified significantly when three large projects collaborated in the common use and development of the technology. These were the “Efficiency Sea2” and the “STM Validation” funded by the EU and the “SMART Navigation Project” funded by the Korean government. During these projects, an MCP test bank was established and has now been in operation for several years. Nearly 100 organizations have signed up for the platform.

The MCP itself addresses the objectives of the IMO e-navigation initiative, but the ambition is for the MCP to support the digitization of the maritime domain in general.

It is based on the concept of the Internet of web services with special services for identity management and the management of services that support the concept of IMO and maritime services. The MCP supports all users in the use of digital services to exchange public and private information. Potential commercial and non-commercial institutions can become MCP providers using their own MCP instance.

The MCC is established as a neutral, independent stakeholder consortium. He will act as coordinator of the commission of guidelines and norms. The MCC will adopt the open structure of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Interested parties are invited to join the MCC initiatives and bring their own visions and competencies.

The initial consortium was established with the following non-commercial organizations: OFFIS (Germany), KRISO (Republic of Korea), RISE (Sweden), the University of Copenhagen and the Faro General Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland (GLA). The Danish Maritime Authority (DMA), the Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA) and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea (MOF) are members of government observers.

SMA and MOF have expressed that “The MCP could become an important framework for the digitization of maritime sectors, for example, e-Navigation, SMART maritime transport and logistics, maritime traffic management (STM) and MASS (Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship )” with a single voice.