North Charleston-based high-tech company develops tracking system

Thanks to a North Charleston-based high-tech company, ship navigators can get more detailed information about the coasts toward which they sail.

Navigational Sciences Inc., or NavSci, offers high-resolution aerial images generated from satellites and airplane-borne sensors that capture and transmit anything from coastal contours to coral reef locations. Navigators can look at a computer screen to see exactly where they are, the kind of geography they’re in and the geography into which they’re sailing. It’s part of a technology called Geographic Information Systems—GIS—a computerized system for capturing, analyzing and displaying data from which nautical and other geographic maps are made.

NavSci took the technology a step further by developing a 3-D mapping system that enables the navigator to see, in real time, the vessel as it sails its course on a computerized nautical chart.

Formed in May 2000, NavSci began as a provider of satellite imagery to navigational software companies. The five-employee firm serves primarily the marine industry through GIS and environmental data products, and nautical charting based on satellite images.

The technology behind those services has led to NavSci’s present concentration—cargo-tracking systems.

“We wanted to figure out how to track shipping containers globally,” explains Eric Dobson, NavSci’s president and CEO. “We asked ourselves where the edge should be in this technology.”

In early 2001, NavSci finalized its cargo-tracking concept and then searched for companies with the leading-edge technology to apply that concept. The search proved fruitless.

“Nobody was even close to the edge,” says NavSci engineer Scott Blair.

And so the company looked at research facilities—and struck gold with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the renowned Tennessee-based science and engineering facility managed by the U.S. Department of Energy. ORNL helped NavSci find wireless technologies that could be used to construct global cargo-tracking systems.

“We now have an exclusive sub-license on the technology,” says Dobson.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks shifted NavSci’s focus to maritime security, according to Gregory Appling, NavSci’s vice president of product development. The company is perfecting a ship and cargo tracking system for port security needs. Similar to the U.S. air traffic control system, NavSci’s product is being designed to track the location and condition of cargo ships globally, using two-way wireless satellite communications, GIS and the Internet to provide a real-time tracking system NavSci believes will interest the Port of Charleston and the nation’s other major ports. The company hopes to demonstrate its tracking system to the Charleston port over the next year.

NavSci is seeking affiliation with Operation Safe Commerce, a program launched last month by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Customs Service. The program aims to improve security for container cargo moving throughout the international transportation system and to develop tighter security for cargo entering and leaving the United States. Security technology that proves successful under the program will be recommended for implementation system-wide. Naturally, NavSci would like its tracking system to be among the chosen technologies.

Dobson believes NavSci’s technological diversity—the company’s other high-resolution imagery services include hurricane analysis—will prove instrumental in its success. Additionally, he claims NavSci makes its technology cost-effective—a major plus as the company intends to extend its high-tech reach further into commercial markets.

“We’re scientists who understand business,” he says. “We apply good science to commercial applications.”