Development and Feasibility Evaluation of a Low Cost Smart Voyage Data Recorder: Marine Black Box

Dating from the dawn of water transportation, marine accidents have been major causes of concern for governments of nations regardless of being developed, developing or underdeveloped. Recalling the recent ferry sinking incidents in Bangladesh, a research was undertaken to develop a smart but yet low cost voyage data recorder namely Marine Black Box. Though it can never be guaranteed that marine accidents would not happen at all, this solution would help to provide an early warning before the onset of a total disaster and even in the scenario when there is indeed no chance to save the vessel, this system would provide a mean to analyze and investigate the true cause of the accident so that future accidents can be avoided or the perpetrators can be accounted for. What makes this Marine Black Box distinct from typical voyage data recorders is that it sends a vessel's number of passengers onboard, temperature, pressure and humidity along with GPS positional data in real-time to a centralized server which can be accessed through a smartphone app. In case when this real-time logging fails, data can still be retrieved from the SD card inside the black box where data is being constantly logged for redundancy. This paper discusses the details of the working principles, construction and practical evaluation of the system.