Final Report Summary - SHEEL (Secure and Harmonised European Electronic Logbook) The main objective of the SHEEL project was to develop, implement and demonstrate a secure cost effective and harmonised European electronic logbook for fisheries, so as to drive European regulations.The SHEEL project had essentially four objectives:1. to produce a technical specification for a European electronic fishing logbook; 2. to demonstrate the technical feasibility of an electronic log from the transmission end (vessel) to the reception end (fishing authority); 3. to evaluate communication solutions with regard to their suitability, reliability and cost; 4. to create a secure end-to-end communication environment, with acknowledgement of messages, inspector access to data onboard the vessel and protection of data from unauthorised parties.In terms of standards, the SHEEL project successfully defined a common XML data format that takes its roots in the North Atlantic Format (NAF), which was used until now for exchange of data between European authorities and a number of inter-governmental fisheries organisations. The SHEEL XML data format improves both on the flexibility and the capability to evolve with future developments. All of the SHEEL trials were based upon this specification and it is now a publicly available document.The project was structured into seven work packages (WPs), as follows: - WP 1: Management - WP 2: System specifications - WP 3: Communications - WP 4: On board system development The on-board system development continued all over the demonstration phase. The companies were in contact with both authorities and skippers. They were collecting feedback in a continuous basis and were improving their systems. The skippers involved in the demonstrations were very keen in having their ideas influencing the software development. They were particularly interesting in as much automatisation as possible. They had also concrete ideas for how should the user interface look like and what functionalities should be added. In particular, the Spanish skipper preferred the user interface to be an exact copy of the paper logbook. Indeed SainSel spent a great deal of effort to meet the skippers' needs and at the same time be SHEEL compliant. INOV, the Portuguese company gave priority to the compression of the reports so as the messages produced stay in the limits of the Inmarsat C package. -WP 5: On shore system development All companies installed successfully their on shore systems to receive and store the messages from the vessels. Some companies preferred to keep the on-shore system in their premises throughout the first demonstration phase in order to eliminate bugs and ensure its smooth running. The main adaptations needed concerned the acknowledgement of receipt and the certification authority (CA) implementation. A certain degree of freedom was given to the companies in developing their on shore systems. Some companies such as Olrac tried to include as much information as possible in the acknowledgement of receipt; some such as OTS included only the essential. Sodena arranged a system of conservation of the Inmarsat service provider communication messages. Similar was the situation with the CA implementation. Some companies such as Olrac fully implemented it and tested it thoroughly, some such as OTS and INOV implemented it but tested it only marginally, and some didn't implement it at all such as Sodena. Sodena used a different type of authentication system for its messages. Generally, at this stage both authorities and skippers were more concerned with the actual system performance and user friendliness problems than with legal issues of the electronic submissions as such. - WP 6: Demonstration - WP 7: Consolidation SHEEL in general achieved its objectives also due to the non-paid collaboration of the skippers that gave access to their vessel facilities for the demonstration. The 15 skippers of SHEEL have been the main interface with the fishing industry. They helped to develop user friendly on board software, they gave allowed installations on board, they taught themselves how to use the software, produce reports and send them to the authorities. The SHEEL skippers remained in the project until the end and although they often expressed themselves against the use of the electronic logbook as enforcement tool they also understood the simplification it offered for their jobs and the new opportunities this technology would offer them in the long term. A number of technologies as defined in SHEEL could be standardised or further developed so as to reach standardisation maturity. These could be:- the reporting system- the XML schemes- the report exchange methodology- the acknowledgement of receipt system- the authentication and security methodology. There were two aspects of SHEEL that achieved less significant results. The first was to create an end-to-end secure environment. An ambitious public key infrastructure was foreseen in the technical annex but this solution required a certain expertise which not all the partners had, the complexity of managing such a solution was also a concern from the authorities based on the feedback that Norway and Iceland gave from their own national experimentations. The other aspect that probably required more time and effort than the timeframe of the SHEEL project allowed for was the onboard inspection of an electronic logbook. Specific training of inspectors, closer collaboration with the national authorities and definition of a common procedure would have been required, but time lacked. Globally, positive outcomes of SHEEL include the development of an electronic logbook specification capable of emulating the European Commission paper logbook and thoroughly tested on a broad range of vessels with an excellent transmission success rate at reasonable cost. The main pending issues are the data security question and the on-board inspection definition, they would require further work to improve the system specifications and better answer the needs. Nevertheless, the goals of SHEEL were largely achieved and most importantly, it is now difficult for anyone to dispute the technical or economic feasibility of a European electronic fishing logbook. Related documents Final Report - SHEEL (Secure and Harmonised European Electronic Logbook)
