Articles
A marine engineering company in Portsmouth is set to become the first company in the sector able to offer a turnkey search and rescue solution to help those stranded at sea.
French-owned firm McMurdo Group has been formed through the merger and acquisition of several different marine search and rescue companies, and will be based at Portsmouth, where the company currently develops and manufactures emergency rescue beacons. McMurdo Group supplies almost a quarter of the world's emergency beacons used by aviation, marine and military customers, including Boeing, Airbus, the British Royal Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The merger means the company is able to offer customers satellite connectivity infrastructure, monitoring and position software and emergency response management, as well as distress beacons, in one package.
The company said that the improved level of integration between the beacons and satellites, plus an upgrade to the upgrade satellite system, will reduce the beacon-to-alert process from several minutes to “a few seconds”.
Jeremy Harrison, president of McMurdo Group's SAR Solutions, said: “We will soon be able to provide the entire ecosystem – from the beacons to satellite ground station infrastructure to mission and rescue control centre software, resulting in seamless integration and enhanced performance between the various search and rescue components.”
In a typical satellite-based search and rescue scenario a ship, aircraft or individual's emergency beacon transmits distress signals via satellite to a ground receiving station. The station calculates the location of the emergency and sends an alert to the rescue authorities.
Some 26 countries use the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system for satellite-based search and rescue. The system was originally developed in 1978 by the US, Russia, Canada and France. In 20011, 2,313 people were rescued using the system in 644 incidents.
An update to the Copsas-Sarsat system, the Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue (Meosar) upgrade, will add newer satellites from Russia and the EU's Galileo system to provide “near instantaneous” detection, identification and location determination of emergency beacons. Meosar is planned to be operational next year.
McMurdo Group is formed French company Orolia's former Position, Tracking and Monitoring Division, emergency beacon brands McMurdo, Boatracs, Kannad and US company Techno-Sciences, which develops satellite ground stations and emergency response infrastructure and software.
Jean-Yves Courtois, chief executive of the McMurdo Group, said: “The formation of the McMurdo Group is an opportunity to simplify a fragmented, complex market with a unified strategy and an expansive solutions offering. The end result will be an acceleration of more effective and innovative search and rescue and maritime domain awareness solutions.”