Maritime Connectivity Platform

Maritime Connectivity Platform (MCP) is a communication framework enabling efficient, secure, reliable and seamless electronic information exchange between all authorized maritime stakeholders across available communication systems.

Newly released documents

At the General Assembly of the consortium held on the 11th of December 2020, the following public documents were released:

Identity Management and Security: General Approach and Basic Requirements

Identity Management and Security: Identity Management (the MCP usage of Maritime Resource Names, MRN)

Identity Management and Security: Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

Identity Management and Security: Authentication and Authorisation for Web Services

Vetting procedure for MCP instance providers

The documents on Identity Management and Security are mainly updates to the previous document on this topic, which is now split into several documents. These document include updated descriptions on the decentralised PKI and authentication and authorisation for web services. The vetting procedures are new, and described the procedure for vetting new organisations that are enrolled in MCP MIR instances. The next general assembly is scheduled for June 2021, and at this stage it is expected that a full description of criteria for running a MIR instance will be in place. Also considerably progress on the service registry and messaging service is expected.

The Core Components of
MCP

Maritime Identity Registry

For secure and reliable identity information, it provides a single login to all services, using identity information provided by trusted stakeholders.

Maritime Service Registry

For registering, discovering and using all relevant e-Navigation and e-Maritime services, commercial and non-commercial, authorised and non-authorised, for free and against payment. It can be seen as a sophisticated yellow pages phone book or the equivalent of an App Store.

Maritime Messaging Service

An information broker that intelligently exchanges information between communication systems connected to the cloud, taking into account the current geographical position and communication links available to the recipient.

All the core components are Open Source and available in our GitHub repositories.

MCP Governance

The MCP is governed by the MCP consortium (MCC). The MCP consortium was established on 8th of February 2019. Press release for the establishment of the MCC can be found here:

Consortium establishment press release

The MCC governs the standards relating to MCP, including the MCP source code. The MCC operates a testbed for MCP (done by a member on behalf of the consortium), but does not operate an operational instance of the MCP. Rather, the MCC authorises other organisations to run operational instances of the MCP.

The consortium is established by the following non-profit organisations:

  • OFFIS, Germany
  • KRISO, Republic of Korea
  • RISE, Sweden
  • University of Copenhagen, Danmark
  • General Lighthouse Authorities of UK and Ireland

    • And as Governmental Observers:

  • The Danish Maritime Authority
  • Swedish Maritime Administration
  • Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea

    • The terms of the consortium can be found in the consortium arrangement document, which can be found here.

    All other relevant organisations (non-profit and for-profit) are invited to join the consortium.
    Apply for membership by filling the application form and send the filled application to the secretariat.

    Currently the following organisations have joined the consortium as regular members:

    The consortium has an advisory board with representatives from the following international organisations/associations:

    Technical Information

    If you wish to dive into the technical information this is where you should start.

    • A manual for the MCP Management Portal is available.
    • A high-level description of the Maritime Messaging Service (MMS) can be found here.
    • For developers there is online documentation describing how Maritime Identity Registry and Maritime Service Registry works.
    • If you have a service you wish to make available in MCP, you must document it according to the MCP Service Specification. Please refer to the guide for how to fill out the templates for service specification, service design and service instance. As is evident in the document, the guideline is identical the IALA guideline 1128. The MCP will at all times follow this guideline, and the MCDF will seek to influence updates of this IALA guideline if it deems appropriate.
    • For integrating directly with APIs there are Swagger/OpenAPI specifications available for Maritime Identity Registry API and Maritime Service Registry API.
    • Description of environments and release management Environments and release management.
    • For updates, release information, discussions and questions concerning MCP, please use our Google Group.
    • To see the current status on MCP testbed (not an operational instance), go here: MCP status.

    MCP Instances

    There are currently no fully compliant instances of MCP - since the final specifications for MCP are still in the process of being developed. However, two organisations are currently setting up instances that will be MCP compliant:

    In addition to this, the MCC operates (through two of its members, KRISO and Frequentis) an MCP test-instance compromising three environments (test, staging, and public test environment). Any relevant organisation is invited to join this testbed by applying through the management portal of the public test environment here.

    Contact Information

    To get more information, contact Thomas Christensen, the secretary general of the consortium.