In the early 2000s, the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) began looking at better ways of communicating and integrating navigational information for the benefit of both mariners and shore-based authorities. Since then, testbed projects have enabled Canada to identify and to address many important issues such as the way information can be collected, exchanged, transmitted and displayed. The success of these projects was due in great part to close collaboration among mariners, pilots and the governmental organisations responsible for collecting and providing data and information. Marine pilots have played a key role in test beds, both in supplying computerised devices (Portable Pilot Units) which display port information and traffic, or by collectively working for the transmission of environmental data (eg wave height, currents, etc.) from 'smart buoys', web portals, and the AIS base stations.
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