Combined SVDR / ECDIS

Maris introduces the world's first DNV type approved Voyage Data Recorder with optional ECDIS, providing, in addition to the recorded data required under IEC 61996, recording of the complete logbook database in ECDIS.

The MARIS ECDIS logbook, which complies with SOLAS regulation V/28 for records of navigational activities, provides navigator textual notes, route-monitoring information, including reference to the displayed charts, its updating, ship’s track, heading, speed, alarms and acknowledgements and all other settings of the ECDIS900. The past twelve hours of this data is recorded to the hardened storage device, fixed or float free, together with the obligatory VDR or S-VDR data.

The VDR2000 / S-VDR2000 replay system allows the data to be “burnt” to CD ROMs and in doing so an ECDIS reader heads the data such that replay reconstructs the actual ECDIS displayed data. This in addition to the display of recorded raw data, audio, VHF, radar, etc which can be displayed in raw form, as radar image or in the form of a conning display. The C.D. with recorded data may be replayed on any windows compatible PC.

With the increased use of ECDIS, impending compulsory carriage and the move to paperless navigation traditional plotting of ships position on paper charts will be significantly reduced; in most cases it will not be executed at all, when ECDIS is used as primary aid to navigation.

It means that the logbook database in ECDIS is left as the only source of route monitoring information, including reference to displayed charts, its updating, ships track, heading, speed and all settings of ECDIS.

Existing standards do not contain requirements for the registration and recording of this information in VDR and S-VDR systems now required for compulsory carriage on all SOLAS registered vessels between 2006 and 2010. Phase in compulsory carriage of ECDIS is expected to commence toward the end of the S-VDR phase in around 2009. Ship-owners are thus faced with investing first in either a VDR or S-VDR and then an ECDIS. Neither a VDR nor S-VDR records the complete navigational picture. Whilst an ECDIS with logbook function compliant with the SOLAS requirements for records of navigational activities under regulation V/28 does - it does not record this data to a hardened removable storage media. MARIS has thus developed options for both its VDR2000 and S-VDR2000 to enable integration of its ECDIS900 system in one and the same unit providing complete ECDIS900 logbook recording and replay. The combined units are less than the cost of an ECDIS900 and separate VDR2000 or S-VDR2000 and likewise the double installation costs of fitting both independent of one another are halved since one installation provides both systems. An addition of a single ECDIS workstation enables the ship-owner to move toward paperless navigation or, dependent on flag state, a reduction of the paper chart portfolio otherwise required to be carried.