NELSON is a €15 million EU co-funded project that brought together 10 partners from Finland, Sweden and Spain. The project has had a somewhat eventful beginning: since September 2025, 14 milestones have been completed, and numerous events and info sessions have been held to inform and involve project stakeholders.
Building on earlier digitalisation initiatives, NELSON modernises maritime navigation and improves data exchange between ships and shore through data-driven, automated, and interoperable digital maritime services. During the first six months, the project has focused on setting up the operational and technical foundations for future deployments. And here are some project highlights:
- Early progress has already been made in fairway infrastructure development. In Sweden, seven out of the planned 34 VDES base stations have been installed, marking an important step towards enabling reliable digital ship–shore communication. In Finland, the installation plan will be developed this year.
- Several activities have focused on development of remote pilotage. NELSON advances the adoption of remote pilotage by of developing the digital infrastructure, operational procedures, and data exchange needed to pilot vessels safely and efficiently from shore. So far, operational procedures and risk assessment frameworks have been planned, and technological description of remote pilotage has been worked on. In addition, the development plan for the positioning solution supporting remote pilotage operations has been completed.
- A lot of preparatory work has been made to establish a technical platform for digital traffic management services that authorities offer to traditionally manned, remotely controlled, or remotely piloted vessels. The overall goal is to harmonise, S-100 compliant information exchange.
- Last, but not least, the first months have included various stakeholder engagement activities in Finland and in Spain. These events and stakeholder workshops are critical as the input from stakeholders are essential for the project to be able to provide services that are usable and worth developing.
Together, these early achievements lay the groundwork for the next stages of the project, where the developed infrastructure, services and operational concepts will be further implemented, tested and validated in real operational environments.
More information about the NELSON is available on the NELSON project’s website.
Disclaimer: This article is produced as part of the NELSON project, co-funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed herein are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
