Low Cost Vessel Monitoring System for Inland Water Transport in Bangladesh (LCSMS - IWTB)

Abstract

Bangladesh is a riverine country and communication by waterway is of great importance especially in the southern region of the country. Waterway is the only means of transport and as a result a large number of people has to travel by boats and ships in the coastal areas and inland rivers. Since the early 1950's, motor launch services have become popular and in the period of 1997-98 there were 1,853 registered launches operating in 227 routes. But there is no proper vessel monitoring system in our country and this result into tragic disasters every year, incurring a heavy toll onhuman lives. At least 4,420 people died, 520 people injured and 400 people remained missing in more than 550 passenger boat and ship accidents that took place in last 38 years in Bangladesh. In this paper a simple and cheap but effective vessel monitoring system is developed for inland vessels. Our device can detect overloading and capsize events by tracking the floating position of a ship and instantly notify the authority and/or the Potential travelers with current coordinates of the vessel, which is obtained using the Global Positioning System (GPS). This can certainly boost up the rescue process and minimize losses. It will encourage the traveler not to board on any overloaded vessel at jetty as this is one of the key reason for many deaths each year during public holidays in Bangladesh. We have used an android phone connected with Arduino via HC-05 Bluetooth device for the communication between the device installed in the vessel and server stored in web. The web server communicates with the control room and travelers. Our developed system can save many lives each year if the government comes forward to implement this project in Bangladesh.