The European Maritime Simulator Network (EMSN) has been developed to provide a large-scale test environment for maritime safety.
This network evolved from a proof of concept and was operationalized during the EU-funded Sea Traffic Management (STM) Validation project and can be regarded today as a baseline technology/testbed for interdisciplinary research in shipping.
Carrying out the tests on real ships would have been too great a technical and logistical effort.
For this reason, research was carried out in cooperation with the project partners and three well-known simulator manufacturers to find a solution.
Through the participation of different simulation centres which are spread all over Europe, the implementation on the simulator was an obvious choice. The idea of the EMSN was born.
In the course of the EU-funded research project MONALISA 2.0, the “European Maritime Simulator Network” (EMSN) was developed, currently the largest civil simulation network worldwide.
In the follow-up project STM Validation, up to 30 simulation bridges could be coupled simultaneously in a traffic scenario in order to gain insights into the practical suitability of research results.
After completion of the STM validation project, the EMSN could be maintained and extended, so that currently 10 simulator centers with more than 40 simulator bridges have joined the EMSN Connect under the lead of the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML.
The experience gained in the EMSN project in structure and implementation of a ship simulator network thus formed the basis for EMSN Connect.