Asia/Pacific News
Singapore Closes Control Centre
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) announced that it has officially decommissioned its first Port Operations Control Centre (POCC) at Tanjong Pagar Complex, which tracked vessels in the Singapore Strait and the nation's port waters for more than 28 years.
The retirement of the old facility follows the commissioning of a new POCC at Changi Naval Base in 2011 and the re-commissioning of an upgraded POCC at PSA Vista in September 2012.
The old control center, which began operations in 1984, started off using VHF radios to manage vessel traffic, later upgrading to a radar-based Vessel Traffic Information System (VTIS).
At a ceremony marking the decommissioning, MPA's chief executive, Lam Yi Young, spoke about the POCC officers who protected the thousands of vessels that called on the Port of Singapore each year from 1984 to 2012.
The $10 million upgrading project at the PSA Vista POCC included the addition of a new VTIS that can integrate data from radar, closed circuit television system, ship databases, and other sources and can handle up to 10,000 vessel tracks at one time, twice the previous capacity, according to the MPA.
