When Conxx took part in the Wireless Waterways project no one involved anticipated that the results would be featured at a White House event where the Port of Pittsburgh’s pilot project was celebrated as one of the 12 Transportation Champions of Change. The Department of Homeland Security placed a strong emphasis on interoperability and data-sharing between agencies to enhance security.
After partnering with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a computerized virtual locking system, PPC reached out to Conxx to help design the remainder of the network, called Wireless Waterways. It enabled the integration of cameras, sensors, and security management systems, and the exchange of rich data between vessels and government agencies. Read More The network also provides Wi Fi all along the waterway, which provides valuable connectivity to recreational users, commercial operators, and other businesses along the river. Pittsburgh is the second busiest inland port and the 20th busiest port of any kind in the United States. With more than 32 million tons of cargo moving through the port each year, the Port of Pittsburgh Commission (PPC) recognized that they needed a stronger network infrastructure to modernize and streamline the port’s operations.
River vessels, used for both moving cargo and people, are often viewed as an outmoded form of transport, in part because of their reliance on old technology, such as VHF radio, with nary a Wi-Fi signal in sight. So to bring these river vessels up to snuff, so to speak, Pennsylvania’s Port of Pittsburgh Commission (PPC) has launched its Wireless Waterways project.
Working with students from Carnegie Mellon University and with volunteers, the PPC built a backbone for marine technology and Internet applications that expands across Pittsburgh’s three rivers — the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers.
About six miles of each river is covered by the network, which is connected by high-bandwidth Wi-Fi and a fiber backhaul. Beyond the three rivers, four nearby locks and dams are also connected with less complete coverage, said PPC Executive Director James McCarville. The entire system, he said, provides a backbone for both commercial and recreational boaters to have better information and make better decisions on the water.
Before this network was built, McCarville said that boats operated much the way people did prior to cell phones being commonplace. Most rivers run through rural or low-income areas, he said, where there’s no Internet availability and cell phone reception is spotty.
“Well, that’s what we’ve got with the barge transportation system — we don’t have a reliable way of verifying when and where people will show up,” he said. “As a result, we’ve got a tremendous amount of lost time in trucks ordered, trains ordered for barges that don’t appear on the predicted schedule. This is going to bring transparency to that schedule and take a tremendous amount of inefficiency out of the waterway intermodal connections.”
Offering river-goers all of this data is the Wireless Waterways Maritime Situational Awareness Portal (MSAP), a Web-based GIS interface with layers of information offered by the PPC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and will eventually offer information from the people via crowdsourcing, McCarville said.
June 17, 2013 By Colin Wood, http://www.govtech.com/wireless/Pittsburgh-Brings-Wi-Fi-to-its-Waterways.html