TABLE OF CONTENTS Navigation can be defined as the process of planning, recording, and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is a process that looks ahead in an effort to determine how a safe arrival can be secured. Physical sensors can only measure what "just" happened, at best. The navigation process, including sensor systems and associated human and electronic controls and monitor algorithms, must taken this "historic" information and convert it into rudder and thrust commands that affect future events. How well this is achieved can be judged by various cost and safety measures, such as average vessel passage time, safe passage probability, and ship footprint control deviation.
In an effort to differentiate and quantity marine navigation safety requirements in the United States, the departments of Transpiration and Defense have defined marine navigation in terms of "phases." The four phases of marine navigation defined in the Federal Radionavigation Plan [1] are ocean, coastal, harbor/harbor approach (HHA), and inland waterway. Each phase of marine navigation is distinguished by a clearly different set of performance requirements. These requirements are based on safety and environmental concerns and support the desire to minimize marine collisions, ramming, and groundings.
The current technological characteristics and policy constraints on the...
