How Vessel Traffic Management System Helps Port Call & Berth Optimisation?

Port call and berth optimisation is the work of reducing a vessel’s time from “approach” to “departure” while keeping safety, compliance, and service readiness intact. In practice, that means every stakeholder plans around the same operational truth, when the ship reaches the pilot boarding place, when nautical services are ready, when the berth is genuinely available, and when cargo operations start and finish.

IMO’s port-call guidance describes port calls as a holistic process that brings administrative, nautical, and operational planning into a common port environment, including berth planning and service planning across the call.

A Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS), often discussed alongside Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), supports this optimisation because it sits at the exact point where plans meet reality: vessel movements in the fairway, approaches, access channels, anchorages, and berth pockets.

IMO has long positioned VTS as particularly appropriate in port approaches and access channels and in high-density or complex navigation areas, with the VTS provider interacting with traffic as situations develop while navigation decisions remain with the ship’s master.

When ports connect that movement picture to berth planning and port-call coordination, the result is fewer “hidden” delays (waiting at anchorage, missed windows, conflicted resources) and tighter berth utilisation without compromising safety.

The bottleneck is rarely “the berth” it’s the timing

Ports do not lose berth capacity only because they lack quay length. They lose capacity because timing uncertainty forces buffers everywhere: vessels arrive early and wait; pilot/tug windows drift; terminals reshuffle yard and gang plans; and downstream departures slip. This is why modern port-call optimisation focuses on reducing port stay and idle time, cutting operational costs and fuel burn, and improving predictability through real-time coordination.

The largest timing errors usually enter the workflow before the vessel is alongside, often during approach and arrival sequencing. If the port does not have high-confidence arrival times at the pilot boarding place and at the berth, berth planning becomes “best guess”, which forces conservative scheduling and creates avoidable congestion.

What a Vessel Traffic Management System contributes to berth optimisation?

A VTMS is not just a traffic display. In its operational role, it delivers continuous situational awareness and coordinated traffic management in the port’s water area so the port can run to a plan with fewer surprises.

IMO’s VTS guidelines define the service as having the capability to interact with vessel traffic and respond to developing situations, which is the backbone of safe, predictable arrival flows.

That contribution matters for berth optimisation because berth plans rely on two things that VTMS improves directly:

First: Reliable movement status and arrival progression. The port’s plan improves when it knows whether the vessel is inbound at speed, constrained by traffic, holding position, or delayed by weather or channel restrictions.

Second: Controlled sequencing through constrained waterways. Berth windows only hold when the port can sequence arrivals and departures through access channels and turning basins without conflict. When traffic is managed as a system (not as isolated ship movements), the berth plan stays realistic.

The data layer that turns traffic monitoring into port-call execution

Operational VTMS implementations draw from multiple sensor and data feeds, commonly including AIS, radar, and CCTV, often complemented by hydro-meteo inputs, so operators see both identity and behaviour, even when one feed degrades. 

This multi-source view is what keeps berth planning honest.

AIS gives declared identity and voyage data; radar verifies actual movement; CCTV supports visual confirmation in critical zones. When the VTMS consolidates these inputs, ports maintain a reliable picture of inbound queue dynamics and can act early, before delays compound at the berth.

How VTMS tightens the port-call timeline?

Port-call optimisation is a chain of operational events. When one event slips, everything downstream slips. The most valuable impact of VTMS shows up when the port uses the live traffic picture to protect event-to-event handoffs.

During approach planning, the VTMS movement picture supports accurate inbound status and helps the port align the arrival stream with channel capacity and safety constraints described by IMO’s VTS framework for port approaches.

During arrival sequencing, the port benefits when the VTMS supports orderly flows to the pilot boarding place and through access channels, reducing last-minute holds that destroy berth windows. The IMO’s “Just-in-Time” arrival guidance describes the operational goal clearly: arrive at the pilot boarding place only when berth, fairway, and nautical services are ready, which depends on shared readiness signals and accurate movement status.

During berthing and unberthing execution, VTMS supports a real-time view of vessel movement and local traffic conflicts, which helps maintain safe margins and avoid secondary delays such as blocked basins or simultaneous movements that must be staggered for safety.

The practical berth impact is straightforward: a port that holds its arrival sequence holds its berth schedule.

Why do collaboration standards matter for berth optimisation?

The biggest berth gains happen when the VTMS picture is not trapped in a control room. Port-call optimisation requires shared operational awareness across stakeholders, port authority/harbour master, pilots, towage, terminals, agents, and the vessel so plans update together.

This is the logic behind Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM): a standardized message format for sharing port-call data so stakeholders build common situational awareness and synchronize plans.

The PortCDM ecosystem also includes standardized port-call messaging specifications (for example, S-211) designed for sharing intentions and outcomes of movements and services in a port call.

When ports apply this approach, berth optimisation stops being “terminal-only” planning and becomes “port-wide” planning where nautical readiness, channel conditions, and berth availability converge into a single feasible schedule.

Just-in-Time arrival makes berth plans workable

Just-in-Time (JIT) arrival is not a slogan; it is a mechanism for reducing unnecessary waiting and emissions by aligning voyage speed and arrival timing with berth and service readiness.

IMO’s JIT Arrival Guide provides the port and shipping sectors with proposals for improving this coordination, and industry work on port call optimization describes JIT arrival as ensuring the vessel arrives at the pilot boarding place only when the berth, fairway, and nautical services are ready.

A VTMS supports JIT arrival in the only place where it must hold true: the port’s immediate sea area and approaches. If the port cannot reliably manage arrival order and movement constraints, then “JIT arrival” collapses into anchorage waiting. With a VTMS feeding a shared operational picture, the port has the live signals required to keep the JIT principle intact at execution time.

Turning traffic reality into berth allocation decisions

Berth allocation is widely studied because it sits at the centre of terminal productivity and port-wide throughput. Academic work frames berth allocation as a planning problem with arrival-time constraints and physical-space constraints, meaning small timing errors create cascading inefficiencies.

Modern operational research also links real-time AIS data to dynamic berth allocation decisions, pairing ETA prediction with berth optimisation logic.

In port operations terms, this means berth optimisation improves when berth decisions are refreshed using live movement reality (what the VTMS observes) rather than static ETAs that drift. When the port updates the berth plan from a trusted movement picture and propagates the update through port-call coordination, it reduces rework, short-notice changes, and berth idle time.

Where other solutions usually stop, and what ports need instead?

Across the market, ports commonly adopt three types of capabilities:

1. Traffic surveillance and control capabilities grounded in VTS/VTMS practice and guidelines.

2. Port-call collaboration and standardised data-sharing via PortCDM message formats and related standards.

3. Port community / single-window style process digitisation that reduces administrative burden and improves visibility, sometimes including vessel scheduling and berth planning functions.

   
   

Berth optimisation improves most when these capabilities connect into one execution chain: traffic reality drives shared timestamps; shared timestamps drive feasible berth/resource plans; and feasible plans drive JIT arrivals and fewer delays.

This “connected chain” is also reflected in industry guidance that stresses standardised port-call process mapping, explicitly covering berth arrival planning, services planning, and pilot boarding place arrival planning, supported by standard data element definitions.

In plain terms: ports get the best berth outcomes when traffic management, service readiness, and berth planning run on the same clock.

Results ports measure when VTMS supports port-call and berth optimisation

When the VTMS supports port-call execution (not just monitoring), the measurable outcomes track directly to time and predictability.

Less waiting and lower fuel burn 

Port-call optimisation frameworks target reductions in idle time and anchorage waiting, which reduce fuel consumption and emissions while lowering operational costs.

Higher throughput from the same infrastructure 

When berth plans hold and arrival sequences stay stable, ports turn the same quay length into more completed calls per period through reduced berth idle time and fewer knock-on delays.

Better reliability for every stakeholder 

Shared, real-time data improves predictability and stakeholder coordination, reducing miscommunication and last-minute disruptions across the port call.

These are not abstract benefits. 

They map to the specific process steps that port-call guidance and studies keep highlighting: align the pilot boarding place arrival to berth readiness, keep service planning synchronized, and share the same timestamps and intentions across parties.

What to require from a VTMS when berth optimisation is the goal?

A VTMS that supports berth optimisation must do more than show vessel tracks. It needs operational features that keep the berth plan feasible as reality changes.

It must support real-time data fusion (so decision-makers are not choosing between AIS, radar, or visual confirmation) and provide a reliable record of operational events that stakeholders use in planning. The PortCDM approach emphasizes standardized sharing of intentions and outcomes, which depends on consistent event capture and timestamp quality.

It must support integration into the common port environment, because IMO’s port-call guidance describes holistic integration that brings administrative, nautical, and operational information into shared environments, including port community systems. 

And it must support process discipline and governance, standardized port-call process mapping and consistent data definitions, because data quality is what makes optimisation scalable across calls and terminals.

How do ports move from system installed to berths optimised?

Ports that convert VTMS capability into berth results treat implementation as an operating model change, not an IT project.

They begin by mapping the port-call process in detail, covering berth arrival planning, services planning, pilot boarding place arrival planning, and the start of cargo operations, then align stakeholders around shared event definitions and shared readiness signals.

They adopt standardised message formats and data definitions so intentions and outcomes travel cleanly between systems and parties, which is the core of PortCDM’s approach to common situational awareness.

Finally, they measure performance using operational KPIs tied to berth utilisation and delay sources (anchorage waiting, late pilot boarding, missed windows, re-berthing events), and they continuously refine rules and coordination workflows as stakeholders gain trust in the shared clock.

Conclusion

Vessel traffic management becomes berth optimisation when the port uses the live movement picture to protect the port-call timeline: stable arrival sequencing, synchronized service readiness, feasible berth windows, and shared timestamps that keep every stakeholder aligned.

IMO’s VTS guidance clarifies the operational role of traffic services in port approaches, while modern port-call guidance and PortCDM standards show how ports convert shared data into synchronized planning.

When those pieces connect, berth plans stop absorbing uncertainty through buffers and start reflecting executable reality, reducing waiting, improving throughput, and raising schedule reliability without compromising safety. 

About Innovez One (marineM) applied port-call and berth optimisation

Innovez One’s flagship platform, marineM, is positioned as a Port Management Information System (PMIS) that applies digital technology and AI models across port operations—covering nautical services and berth allocation, alongside operational modules like planning, dispatch, and billing.

For berth and port-call optimisation specifically, Innovez One describes AI-driven planning and dispatch that optimizes vessel allocation and minimizes unnecessary movements and idle time as part of effective port call optimisation.

On the execution side, marineM includes a Marine Services Planner designed to handle complex marine operations (including berthing/unberthing and multi-stage scenarios such as SPM operations and ship-to-ship transfers), supported by data-driven dynamic scheduling.

Public project coverage also describes marineM deployments focused on digitalising and managing port and nautical service operations, planning and dispatch included, which is the operational layer required to turn traffic reality into reliable berth outcomes.