Development of Requirements for Communication Management on Board in the Framework of the E-navigation Concept

The current separation of communication systems and navigational systems on the ships bridge doesn’t meet the requirements of the e-navigation concept of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for safe navigation to include all means and information in the decision making. Hydrographical, meteorolog-ical and safety related information is presented on the communication equipment without filtering or as print-outs solely. A task oriented integration and presentation of this information on the navigational displays will support the officers in their decision making and enhance the safety of navigation. The core element onboard for the integration is the INS (Integrated Navigation System) concept of the IMO where a task and situation dependent presentation of information is specified based on a modular concept. Information should be auto-matically processed, filtered and integrated in the navigational information systems to support the users in their tasks. To achieve this goal a concept for communication management was developed. An Applied Cog-nitive Work Analysis (ACWA) is conducted to identify requirements for the design of a communication man-agement system based on the cognitive processes of the operators. This paper describes the concept for com-munication management and, as a first result, gives the description of the domain of maritime communication that provides a basis for the identification of requirements for communication management in the framework of the e-navigation concept.