Vessel Management Heligate
The system being developed collects AIS information from receiving stations located near the coast (these receiving stations always receive signals from vessels within their range).
Overview
A customer has requested to develop a ship management system for a shipping project.
The system being developed collects AIS information from receiving stations located near the coast (these receiving stations always receive signals from vessels within their range).
The collected information is displayed on a map in real time, allowing operators to understand the overall trends of the vessel.
It also has a function to warn if the vessel is unable to contact you or if it deviates from the set route.
Challenges
A client requested us to develop a ship management system for a marine project.
The system to be developed collects AIS information from receiving stations installed near the coast (these receiving stations constantly receive signals from ships within range).
The collected information is displayed on a map in real time, allowing the operator to keep track of the overall movement of the ship.
It also has a function to warn if a ship loses contact or deviates from the set route.
Solution
To solve the problem of processing large amounts of data, we decided to use Apache Kafka (hereafter referred to as Kafka), a modern distributed data processing system. Kafka is known as a powerful platform that provides extensive support for real-time data streams and event processing. This platform is deployed on a server connected to the AIS receiving station and can receive a large amount of real-time messages (Kafka producer). The contents of the messages are then pushed to a server for processing and storage in a database (Kafka consumer).
Outcomes
Delivery was completed in 3.5 months (0.5 months longer than originally planned, but the reason was that the deployment of the actual receiving stations was suspended due to bad weather).
The system we developed was able to operate stably with 15 actual AIS receiving stations installed by the customer.
During development, we also worked with the customer to research nautical charts. In fact, the customer himself referred to other websites. He was surprised and satisfied with the development team's excellent understanding of AIS and nautical charts.
Although the customer was not familiar with creating requests and changing function specifications, we were able to successfully control the issues of the request by adopting the SCUM/Agile model.
