Disc1_ Discourse_A cartesian approach to radio for sailors

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Disc1_ Discourse

 A cartesian approach to radio for sailors

Or a much better and self-explanatory title for this post would be:

Cartesian approach to marine safety, human factors and human machine interfaces with a specific look on software defined radio setups to receive mandatory safety information or just useful messages, targeted at the leisure sailors

Disclaimer

By publishing this message-paper I’m kidding and making an online experiment with you, the reader, and first and most of all with myself. The text below is just a message in progress. Truncated by drafted ideas, naïve assumptions, unreferenced strong assertions and plenty of gramatichal and ortographic errors. On the antipods of my past rationale. My approach during the last decades was to work hard on a paper, for months or even years if necessary; before submitting it to publishing in a so called top level scientifc journal. Here I’m for the very first time publishing a message-paper that is, as of the time of writing this, just a very tentative draft on my ideas and experience on maritime safety and specificcaly on leisure cruising; with an anchor on radio reception of  timely and safety information. Because I was an experimentalist who did for an entire life an “epoché”  (Husserl) suspending my on tast on informed speculation and an attraction to the deductive knowledge. Because, the proposals documented here are largely undocumented. Based on my personal thoughs, anedoctical knowledge and personal concern with safety at sea as a skipper. And given my personal issues, better to share now than to postpone.

Paper Version 0.2.2

Definition of Software Defined Radio (SDR)

First, let us briefly highlight the concept and definition of  Software Defined Radio (SDR) for the non-tech minded reader.

Historical

Born by the middle of the previous century for very odd militar and scientific applications. Insanely expensive and complex systems. Then, already in our century, a bunch of neerds start play with cheap tv-usb dongles to achieve, they tought, similar results. Now  SDR are used at all levels of radio transmission and reception: militar, scientific, industrial, amateur radio and so on.

Technical

Instead of higly complex, very difficult to operate analogue systems to transmit and/or receive radio messages it is possible, just to convert the analog radio signals in digital ones, I/Q streems, and then through software, extract all the relevant information, voice or data (text/numeric/images…).

Factual

One more example of the dematerialization of our lives. No more radios plagued with buttons and wheels and emiting all kinds of annoying whispers: just connect a black box to your idevice or computer. As in, no more the smell and cosiness of the books of our library: just read e-books and ibooks. As in, no more damaged music records: just pay a monthly fee to Spotify or Tidal. As in, no more personal and interpersonal relathionships in the real world: just go to social virtual networks. As in, no more pieces of gold in our middle class pockets, just nothing but debts (owned by the wealthy) and bitcoins. And at last, one day our souls will be detached from our bodies and will start to float above our heads, as in a sort of  flashback to the old days of Mr. René.

Introduction

Among the transportation systems, transport aircraft might be seen as an inerently frightning one. In fact, pºlenty of people are quit afraid oftravelling by plane. Nevertheless, transport aircraft is the most safe system well above the “open” road traffic and even well above the other “closed” on, the rail transport (Note 1).

Why, because of decadfes of investment in safety and in particular in a safety perspective approach with human factors, HF (airplane crew, on land staff ….) at the core of the assessement, control, in-depth analysis of accdidents and incidents and efective tranning and regulamentation.

By the 90´of the last century and up to 2005 I dedicated much of my carereer as academic and adviser to road traffic safety from a HF perspective. My colleague and friend, Ray Fuller worked both in aircraft and road safety . We edited a book exactly  trying to promote an HF approach , instead of just blaming road users (1)

As a coincidence, or maybe note I have been reading a book from an air plane pilot on HF below the surface, ie, diving (2)

What about safety of "surface" maritime transport? It is true, the are applied research on the subject, and regulations and sources of information quite quoted with plenty of abuse of acronimous, as I have also done in this blog: Solas convention, GMDSS, MSI,, SafetyNet, etc. But le us face it: the maritime system, even its professional part,  in spite of recent huge improvements, is not even quite close of the aircraft system as far as effective safety regulations, good practices, training, avalaibility of equipment is concerned. And when we start thoinking of the small boats subsystems, namely the leisure cruising, there we find real, persistent and threathing issues.

Method

By concept, charter boats are catching eye floating platforms targeted to complete idiot summer sailors, and owned cruising boats are not necessserely different; with inexistent, outdated, undocumented and unreliable systems of navigation. Not good. Therefore, a few years ago, more as a seafarer than an academic, I start to build my of set of portable, reliable kit of tools (se message xxxx). By then I was quite pleased with my ECDIS-like tools:

-       a macbook on ther chart table, receiving ais and gps reliable inpputs, integrated in OpenCPN with official vectgorial charts of the area of navigation, and outputs available in a private wifi hotspot

-       a marinized iPad at the helm, receiving the outputs of Open CPN, integrated by SEAiq also with official vectgorial charts

-       everythiong working fine, day after day of coastal navigation, and was tested on chartered catamarans.

-       With a little more redundancy and aditional fine tunning and I felt close to achive a all around ECDIS portable system.

In short: a source of peace of mind as a skipper of a boat with plenty of family members onboard. And plenty of food for thought on transport safety, human factors and user interfaces.

Because of this fast success with navigation tools I was confident of been able to achieve the same level of functiionality and safety with the information subsystem target to receive and properly display in real time warnings, notice to marines and other useful information – an SOLAS/GMDSS- like system in short.

Obviously I was over confident and even arrogant.

Still no Results

I still think my path was/is correct: to build a system based on Software Defined Radios (SDR). However, I miserably failed in building a full automatic, integrated, portable yet reliable kit.

But I learned quite a lot during all the trials and errors.


 Conclusion in Progress

And that was the main reason to start a blog and sharing what I did so far on this mixed scientific-technological-personal enquiry.

Note 1

Air, road, rail, maritme transport systems. Thoughts on what I call closed, open and mix systems of transportation placed on a continuous with a clear relationship with safety ranking, accidents and near accidents data (to be demonstarted helsewhere). Closed:  air and rail. Open: road traffic. Mix: marine traffic.

References

1. Fuller, R., & Santos, J. A. (Eds.). (2002). Human Factors for Highway Engineers. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.

2. Lock, Gareth (2019). Under Pressure, diving deeper with human factors. UK : Vision Maker Press.