A new system enabling remote monitoring in real time has been successfully tested onboard Crystal Serenity, the latest luxury cruise vessel built by Chantiers de l’Atlantique for Crystal Cruises. Developed in close co-operation by ABB Solutions – Marine Division and Crystal Cruises Technical Staff, the system enables full access to the data of the integrated automation system from the ABB Office in Genova.

The request for connection to the vessel is sent to Crystal office in Los Angeles and from there is routed to the vessel. When the communication is activated, the operator can remotely access the ship’s data from the workstation on his desk. The information such as process displays, alarms and events lists, trend displays, system status displays, etc. is available in real time. The data can also be retrieved and stored separately for further analysis.

The main objective is to support fault tracing in case of system failure thus helping to reduce the system downtime. This remote data access could enable even the control of the equipment onboard, but this function is not implemented for safety reasons. The access to the system is protected in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations. The tests have shown that the system operates almost in real time and the time delay of the communication is negligible. The remote data access is a standard function that can be implement on any vessel with an ABB Integrated Automation System.