Overview

During the last decades the Finnish and Swedish icebreaking services have used the IBNet icebreaking management system for planning of the icebreaking activities and for operating the icebreaking fleets. IBNet has main servers located onshore, at the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency in Finland and onboard servers are located on each icebreaker with replication to the onshore servers.

The onboard servers record all relevant activities of each icebreaker within the IBNet system, in case of connection failure to the onshore server. When such failure happens, all missing information is downloaded to the icebreaker’s database and the new info is sent to the servers onshore.

The objective of Work Package 4 is to further enhance and adapt the IBNet system to the new security demands. The aim is to meet the new needs for secure digital data exchange and create system and geographical redundancy for IBNet, by having server capacity in both Finland and Sweden, to provide safe and reliable icebreaker management service of data between icebreakers, IBNet ashore, vessels and port actors.

Task 4.1 – Establishment of additional servers in Sweden

This task addresses a crucial need to ensure the resilience of IBNet by establishing additional servers in Sweden. The servers are necessary to mitigate the security risk in case of failure of the internet connection between Sweden and Finland or if the main servers, located only in Finland, for some other reason are unusable.

The main servers of the IBNet system will be duplicated to an environment that will be created at the Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA). Thereby it will be possible to replicate information between the icebreaker servers also to the servers in Sweden, thus increasing IBNet security and improving system and geographic redundancy. For this purpose, additional server capacity will be purchased and installed at SMA.

The server installation will be done in several phases:
– Design and assessment
– Test and evaluation
– Production system establishment
– Production handover

Task 4.2 – Development of the data exchange to and within IBNet

The task addresses the need to develop data exchange to and within IBNet by reviewing and securing the data sources that IBNet uses. This to secure the data in case of a breakdown of network connection between Sweden and Finland or other disturbances in the data collection.

The development of the data exchange will include securing the data sources by analysing the current sources and set up in IBNet, identifying additional sources, set up new links for data exchange to IBNet, make sure all the data is replicated between the IBNet servers, etc. This will ensure a fully functioning collective IBNet system for both countries as well as possible separate operational Swedish and Finnish IBNet systems in case of loss of connection between the countries’ IBNet main servers.

During the development, the input sources to IBNet will all be looked over, but special emphasis will be put on the satellite images. Satellite images are vital to the icebreaking operations and are currently supplied to the system, after having been received from the satellites and then processed, from one single instance in Finland.

There are other Scandinavian data sources for processing and distribution of satellite images than the one used in IBNet. These sources will be investigated and an additional link to a satellite distributor will be set up to IBNet. This will ensure geographic redundancy and secure the flow of the vital satellite images to IBNet and the icebreaking operations. The new and enhanced data exchange to and within IBNet will be tested before being released into the IBNet production environment.

Task 4.3 – Development of readiness for new base chart

Currently, the IBNet is not capable of using continuously and automatically updated navigational chart formats due to the lack of a suitable chart engine (i.e., a software that makes it possible to use and display specific types of chart material). The information contained in navigational chart formats, such as navigational aids and depth information, is today updated manually to the IBNet system.

The aim of this task is therefore to develop readiness of the IBNet system for new base charts by purchasing and installing an updated chart engine in IBNet and further developing the system to accommodate the chart engine and new base chart. This engine will be capable of using standardization of S100 or other similar standardized navigational chart material in IBNet. S1O0 is a new electronic navigation chart format which will provide several new features and layers of data to the IBNet, including vital information for icebreakers and icebreaking management. Since the actual S1O0 standard is still under development, IBNet will be incorporated with S100 chart if it is ready during the project timeline. If not, other chart material, such as S57 will be integrated with the installed chart engine.