How does the AIS work?
Vessels carry AIS transponders which regularly transmit messages that contain a wealth of data such as location, type, vessel name, navigational status, heading, speed, and MMSI number. All this data is received by AIS receivers and transferred into our AIS monitoring centre. Alltogether, the data collection allows for showcasing the movement of the marine traffic in real-time and for monitoring the vessel traffic in a specific area, such as along the cable route.
When analyzing risk factors for a specific cable asset, multiple factors are taken into account. Defined protection zones and a tailor-made monitoring strategy help to specifically identify external risks around the cable asset and trigger alarms to prevent any damage to the cable. The monitoring strategy includes results of a detailed desktop study and risk analysis which is based on parameters such as fishing, shipping and transit activities, cable burial assessment, existing subsea infrastructure, bathymetry, seabed sediments and benthic ecology (fish, shellfish, etc.). Custom rules are defined to monitor vessel behaviour within the protection zones and whenever an unusual vessel activity is identified in the vicinity of the cable, alert is triggered and notification is sent. This makes it possible to either contact a vessel to prevent it from damaging the cable or to use this information following an outage to see which vessel may have caused the outage. Detailed analysis of alerts helps to paint an accurate picture of where risk is prevalent and enables to streamline more effective mitigation plans for the future.