The BONUS ESABALT consortium is committed to user-driven R&D. The end-user and stakeholder community will be engaged in the development through a number of dedicated tasks and using methods such as surveys, interviews, and workshops. On this basis will the system requirements be developed. The requirements specification in turn will allow us to formulate system assessment criteria in terms of situational awareness and maritime safety improvement. The concept will be refined based on user feedback, and the developed solution will also be evaluated by potential end-users.

The approach to assessing the feasibility of the ESABALT concept is to use a combination of analysis, lab and field tests, simulations, and full-scale demonstrations. Different portions of the overall solution will be developed to a prototype level and demonstrated and together these demonstrations and simulations will constitute a “proof-of-concept” after careful evaluation of their results.

The project can be summarized by three development phases:

1) Concept refinement, analysis, and system design

2) Proof-of-concept

3) Viability Analysis and Roadmap Development

A number of reports will document the results of each phase and published on our website for public feedback. Finally, the development roadmap and a set of related recommendations will be presented to BONUS and the wider user community. This will serve as a guide for how the ESABALT concept can be further developed into an operational system.

Summary

The ESABALT consortium is developing and evaluating an innovative concept for increasing maritime safety with particular emphasis in the Baltic Sea. The focus is on increasing overall situational awareness, through the use of crowdsourcing and by integrating various advanced navigation, Earth Observation, and communications technologies. We seek feedback and strong engagement with the end-user community and various stakeholders, including Search and Rescue (SAR) Centers, Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) Centers, and environmental authorities. Furthermore, we will inform the user community and public concerning progress of the project through our website and through dedicated dissemination and outreach activities.