Harbor authorities and companies manage huge amounts of data and wide areas of land and sea in their everyday operations. This article discusses the benefits and use cases of GIS in harbor asset management using a GIS-based cloud platform GISGRO to demostrate use cases. Read on to see what GIS and online asset management bring to maritime industry.
What is GIS?
The acronym GIS stands for Geographic Information System. It combines information to the geographical location and can be used in several different fields from navigation to complex asset management. The spatial data can be in two or three-dimensional coordinates, and the information can be basically anything related to harbor’s assets or operations. GIS enables the management of data in easy-to-understand and visual format which improves efficiency in comparison to traditional databases with inexhaustible lists and charts.
Map-based and visual platform makes it easy to find and access asset information in one place
- Save working hours
- Decrease errors
- Improve customer service
If you need to find the carrying capacity of certain quay, it is easier to go to the right location on a map and reveal the technical information with few clicks, compared to the traditional way of searching the information from archives. Or when you need to quickly find contact information of a certain storage’s owner, you can just click the particular storage on the map in the platform and find the information attached right there. As these examples demonstrate, GIS-based asset management platform is indispensable even when used “only” as a database.
More effective data management is improvement in many ways; it saves working hours by making the information easily available in one place, decreases errors by reducing the amount of incorrect information, and improves customer service as the customers and other stakeholders of the seaport get the wanted information quicker.
Georeferenced 3D data in harbor operations management
Daily operations in a harbor include numerous tasks regarding vessels’ arrival and departure, and maintenance of the property. Operations attached to logistics naturally need to have the location information included, but it also facilitates the maintenance crew’s work when the broken bollard or such is shown on a map with exact coordinates.
With GISGRO you have a real-time situation map of your harbor. 3D scanning data from below and above the waterline gives you a possibility to see the conditions, whether you need to check the keel clearance depth near a certain quay or find the nearest loading area for an arriving vessel. You can send a work order for maintenance crew with exact coordinates and follow up the repair in one online platform.
Geographic information with added data makes port asset management easier and more efficient. In GISGRO, you can enrich the data by adding information to it – assets, repairs, comments and more. To make the information even more usable, you can organize the information by categories and tags. Watch the video below for a quick view on asset data management in GISGRO platform:
Cloud platforms often offer various tools for utilizing the data further in daily operations. In GISGRO, you can for example:
- Make measurements and CAD drawings
- Create depth charts, contours and soundings
- Do volume calculations for dredging
- Manage assets, send work orders and plan the maintenance operations
- Allocate vessels
- And more
How to get started?
Take a look at GIS harbor management software yourself. In GISGRO demo account you can test the tools with a pre-uploaded demo dataset.
For more details, contact our specialist to discuss your port’s needs in GIS and data management. We have co-operated with dozens of ports and harbors in Europe, and would love to offer our expertise to tackle your port’s challenges with GISGRO.
Ville Mäkeläinen
CDBO
+358 44 513 2222
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