Enhanced Personnel Sea Safety Technology Demonstrator

This project is to demonstrate a lo-cost disruptive new technology which will provide reliable high-accuracy real-time monitoring of marine assets and personnel. The technology will be used to reduce commercial and leisure lives lost at sea by enabling the fastest Man Overboard (MOB) rescue times possible when personnel become separated from their mother vessel or offshore platform. The solution will be able to be small enough to integrate into a lifejacket. Similarly the technology can be used to detect if marine assets have become detached or gone overboard from their correct location and track their location to aid recovery, warn other vessels of potential hazards and reduce the potential environmental impacts these type of events can cause. A typical system incorporates a pre-set electronic geofence around a vessel or platform that works in conjunction with a user worn module (in lifejacket) or attached to the maritime asset which alerts using distance to determine if inside or outside the boundary. Once alerted the system then continues to track position(s) very accurately in real-time without using GPS. A system will have the capability to track multiple modules simultaneously. The principle of a reliable, instant alert and subsequent high-accuracy tracking enables the quickest possible rescue/recovery times of personnel and other assets at sea by the mother vessel.