MARIFLOW A WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR MARITIME INDUSTRY

The aim of MARIFlow Project is to provide a prototype of an architecture for automating and monitoring the flow of control and data over the Internet among different organisations. This "electronic medium", capable of delivering value-added services to the participants, encompasses many different technological areas: from communication to security, databases, transaction support and agents. The project will make use of these technologies to produce a workflow management system. In particular, the goal of the project is to develop an adaptable workflow engine through which the activities of the different participants in the maritime industry can be harmonised, combined, and expanded through better tracking of functional dependencies and documents, improved data access and handling, and lower administrative overheads. The MARIFlow system is based on data-centric approach, that is, execution of activities on a host machine is triggered by arrival of data, and generates further data that is sent to participants in the process, where upon arrival may trigger further activities. Nevertheless, the important characteristic of such processes is distribution, not just in terms of geography, but also in terms of ownership, responsibility and autonomy. This paper also addresses the important issues such as security of the documents as well as the tracking of data and documents, for monitoring purposes.