November 25, 2008 : Company announcement
Cooperation between Consist and Kieler Nachrichten
Data on shipping traffic in the Bay of Kiel - live online, and free of charge
In the context of the relaunch of its website, the newspaper Kieler Nachrichten is offering its readers an online shipping information system (SIS) about the ships in the Kiel Fjord. The system, developed by the Kiel software company Consist, provides up-to-the-minute information about general ship data, position, and movements. The above-average traffic for the SIS on KN-Online shows that the public is happy with the opportunity.
Kiel – Any interested people, such as tourists, hobbyist photographers, sailing and ship enthusiasts, can now follow ship position and movements in the Bay of Kiel in real time on the websites of the Kieler Nachrichten (www.kn-online.de/schiffe) and Consist (www.consist.de/www/en/info_center/schiffsinformationssystem.html). The Ship Information System (SIS) created by Consist shows the name, dimensions, destination, travel data (white arrow = at rest, green arrow = afloat) and category of each ship (names underlined in blue = passenger ship), often with a photo as well. The service is free of charge. The SIS can optionally be viewed as a map, satellite view, or ground view.
"With the publicly accessible Ship Information System, we want to highlight our positioning as a software company for the maritime economy. We are the only company providing up-to-the-minute data on ships in the Bay of Kiel," explains Martin Lochte-Holtgreven, Managing Director of Consist.
With SIS, the Kieler Nachrichten offers its readers a modern form of the port gazette (Hafenbericht): "At first, you would think that SIS is of more interest to shipping companies and port management. Yet talking about ships somehow makes everybody yearn for distant shores. The forerunners of the first newspapers in history were started to cover shipping arrivals in the trade ports. So it's no wonder that the port gazette is still a necessary part of every newspaper in coastal regions, which is exactly the case at the Kieler Nachrichten," explains Rainer Pregla, alternate departmental manager at KN-Online.
The Ship Information System provides not only data and facts, but also provokes dreams and emotions. That's how Rainer Pregla also explains the system's success: "We're happy that our Internet presence www.kn-online.de can be decorated with this modern form of the "ship watching". Enthusiastic letters from our readers and the above-average traffic show that this offering has been welcome, and that our readers are thinking more about travel as a result."
Evaluation of AIS signals provides current data
Seagoing vessels of over 300 GT (gross tonnage) have been equipped with AIS (Automatic Identification System) units since 2005, which continually transmit identification and navigation data via ultra short-wave communication. The SIS is based on the receipt of these AIS signals, using graphical material (map, satellite images, and landscape views) from Google Maps.
The Consist software package VERS (Vessel Event & Reporting Sys-tem) for port management and traffic control also uses AIS data. While SIS is oriented towards private users, the VERS variant is equipped with a larger scope of functionality, and is provided for a fee for commercial purposes. For instance, VERS provides exact times of arrival of ferries or ships arriving from the sea.
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Screenshot of the shipping
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Press Contact
Consist
Software Solutions GmbH
Isabel Vollmann
Falklandstrasse 1-3
24159 Kiel, Germany
Phone:
+49 (0)431 / 3993-525
Fax:
+49 (0)431 / 3993-999
vollmann@consist.de
