Bringing Live AIS Information on the Web Sea Charts by Using Ajax

Besides collision avoidance and traffic monitoring, ship AIS (automatic identification system) information is very valuable in other fields of shipping industry. However, it's very hard for people in these fields to access ship AIS information directly. To satisfy their demands, several live AIS Web systems have been developed. Most of them, however, could be further improved in the aspect of user friendliness. By using Ajax technology, we tried to develop a new live AIS Web system to publish the real time AIS information to the public. The architecture and several key technologies of the system, such as AIS information database construction and accessing, sea chart tiling and rendering, AIS information rendering and so on, are introduced. The system shows that Ajax can enable users to view AIS information smoothly. Compared to the legacy systems, more natural user interact behaviors are supported by this system.