Maritime Connectivity Platform

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The Maritime Connectivity Platform (MCP) is a communication framework intended to enable efficient, secure and reliable information exchange in and around the maritime sector, proposed as the infrastructural backbone to E-Navigation. It is under development and testing in projects such as EfficienSea2, STM, and SMART Navigation.

The MCP is not a storage cloud. Its objective is to provide a platform enabling maritime stakeholders to securely access technical services to gain further information for decision-making onboard and ashore during a voyage from berth-to-berth. The MCP is communication framework for maritime users to authenticate, discover, and use technical services (e.g. route optimization or weather forecasts). Clients and Services communicate by standardized web service technologies supported by standard services to set up and facilitate the communication.

The mission of the MCP is to provide an open platform for the maritime sector that enables secure and boundary-free information exchange across various communication channels, such as satellite, cellular phone network and digital radio links. It enables the use of heterogeneous software systems onboard various ship types, including dedicated type approved systems, smartphones, tablets and personal computers, to interact according to standardized interfaces, protocols and access control rights.

The MCP has three core elements:

1. The Maritime Identity Registry (MIR) deals with managing users, vessels and organizations as well as providing information to be used for controlling their access to resources within the Maritime Cloud

2. The Maritime Service Registry (MSR) enables service providers to register their services in the Maritime Cloud and allows the end-user to discover those services

3. The Maritime Messaging Service (MMS) enables transfer of information across diverse communication links in a carrier agnostic and location context sensitive manner