Common Vocabulary Set for Support of Interoperability of Data Contents of Maritime Equipment and Systems in E-Navigation Services

Abstract

In the maritime field, e-navigation, the new maritime service environment paradigm, is a topic of wide discussion. According to the e-navigation concept, the various marine and marine-related domains' data both on- and off-shore are used as resources for maritime services, the purpose of which are to facilitate communication at sea and to ensure safe navigation. To those ends, e-navigation services exchange, share, and utilize data resources created and distributed according to the data product specifications based on the e-navigation Common Maritime Data Structure (CMDS). Currently, maritime equipment and systems transfer data among themselves over ships' networks. In e- navigation, those equipment and systems' data will be utilized as useful data resources. But before that data can be used, it is necessary to create and distribute it according to the above-noted CMDS-based data product specifications. When a data product specification is developed for a specific domain, a common vocabulary for that domain is needed for consistent specification of the data elements that represent the data contents. In this paper, we present a common vocabulary set for consistent representation of the data elements of maritime equipment and systems shipboard. To build the common vocabulary set, we analyzed the digital interface standards for maritime navigation and radio- communication equipment and systems. By analysis of approved sentences for data transmission of maritime equipment and systems, we extracted candidate terms and built the common vocabulary according to the e- navigation CMDS base model.