EMSA takes over the LRIT-IDE

LRIT tracks the position of any merchant ship (> 300 gross tonnage), passenger ship or mobile offshore drilling on a global scale every six hours. The location of each ship is transmitted, via satellites, to data centres established by their Flag States (SOLAS Contracting Governments) which store and make available the information to all participating States upon request. The LRIT system answered a need to gain a worldwide picture of merchant shipping: it was established in 2009 under the supervision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for the purposes of maritime safety, security, and marine environment.

The LRIT-IDE acts like the ‘switchboard’ of a telephone network: it is the central node that relays LRITposition reports between all Data Centres, and is at the centre of a secure network which spans five continents. It handles issues such as availability (is the system available? are all the data feeds running smoothly?) and access rights (who can access the information?). This system has been developed,
hosted and operated on a temporary basis since 2009 by the United States Coast Guard agency. EMSA was appointed as the IDE Operator by the IMO Maritime Safety Committee during its 87th session, and the transfer process has now been successfully completed. In addition to its new role as operator of the LRIT-IDE, EMSA is also the operator of the European Union LRIT Cooperative Data Centre, the world’s largest LRIT Data Centre, which collects position reports from the fleet of the EU Member States, as well as those from several overseas territories, Norway and Iceland and some third countries (approximately 9000 vessels).