Maritime and Coastguard Agency saves lives with the help of Surface Hub

At their National headquarters in Southampton, teams co-ordinate operations with coastguard stations around the country using the latest technology. Aimee Rampton, Maritime Operations Controller explains, “We’re able to bring up the whiteboard on the Surface Hub to map where the casualty started, the time they called us for assistance and it allows us to build a story.”

Locating people or vessels in open water quickly is key to a successful mission. Officers use a specialist charting map called Navionics, connected to the Surface Hub that allows them to share information with colleagues in other centres. Rampton describes the Surface Hub in action, “Using the Surface Hub is faster, it’s slicker; we can draw our search plans on there, rotate the map, put it in 3D. It allows us to keep a good focus on the incident. It's more accurate at a time that there's not much room for error.”

The Operations Centre in Southampton co-ordinates twice daily with a dozen Coastguard stations based around the UK from Aberdeen to Belfast, and Falmouth to Dover, to review ongoing incidents and rostering. Teams use Skype for Business on the Surface Hub to interact with colleagues and coordinate missions. “It allows us to look at all the other staff that are around,” says Rampton, “we get good eye contact and it gives us a picture of what’s going on at other stations and other locations.” The tech has also significantly reduced staff training and travel costs, allowing more funds to be deployed to frontline operations.

With all this technology at work, the Maritime and Coastguard agency are primed to protect people, ships and the marine environment of the United Kingdom.