India will soon use its indigenous Vessel Traffic Management software and hardware that will be used in ports developed by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
Already a Memorandum of Understanding between IIT-M and the VO Chidambaranar (VOC) Port Trust in Thoothukudi has been signed for the software development project.
At present, Indian ports use foreign software for managing the traffic leading to higher operating costs, and the present VTS at VOC Port has been operational for nearly seven years.
Also, it became necessary to have a more effective VTS system as India has seen a rapid increase in maritime traffic.
This project is led by the National Technology Centre for Ports Waterways and Coasts (NTCPWC), at IIT Madras as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) and Digital India initiatives.
According to T.K. Ramachandran, Chairman, VOC Port Trust, Tuticorin, theirs is the first major Indian port to sign an MoU with NTCPWC for indigenous software development and he has called this a “home-grown alternative that would be a game-changer in Indian Maritime Industry”.
K. Murali, Professor In-charge, NTCPWC-IIT Madras was quoted saying in a media, “Though ours is a maiden initiative, the software is expected to be ready in less than a year. Our software will be developed using open architecture. It will be flexible and interoperable, which means it can be integrated with other existing systems that ports use for daily operations,”,
This will cut costs and the reliance on foreign companies as they are very expensive and we do not have complete hardware-software packages, whose internal workings are not known to the user.
But with our own technology, the software can be developed here and an upgrade of hardware can be done based on in-house expert recommendation and that would lead to cutting costs on the hardware required by 50 per cent cheaper.
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