THE ASSEMBLY,RECALLING Article 15(j) of the Convention on the International Maritime Organization concerning
the functions of the Assembly in relation to regulations and guidelines concerning maritime safety,
RECALLING ALSO that, in order to reduce time delays and make possible more efficient search
and rescue (SAR) operations, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of the SAR
telecommunication infrastructure on an end-to-end basis including the preservation of priority
handling of SAR traffic in the landline systems,
RECOGNIZING that emerging technologies, such as display of caller identification, automatic
decoding of certain message parameters and retrieval of emergency data from associated databases,
would enhance the SAR communications system thereby improving the life-saving capabilities of
SAR operations,
HAVING CONSIDERED the recommendation made by the Maritime Safety Committee at its
sixty-sixth session,
RECOMMENDS that, where practicable, in order to enhance the processing of distress alerts and
the effectiveness of SAR co-ordination and operations, Administrations consider implementing some
or all of the following options:
(a) the use of switching and software arrangements for land connections from shore facilities
such as coast earth stations, DSC coast stations and mission control centres to rescue
co-ordination centres (RCCs), so as to preserve the message priority;
(b) equipping RCCs with ship earth stations in areas of unreliable landline operations, so as to
facilitate emergency communications between RCCs and coast earth stations and to enable
direct communications to be made with ships when required;
(c) arranging for distribution of alerts in accordance with the IMO SAR Plan where they
apply, or otherwise to associated RCCs or search and rescue points of contact (SPOCs), and
studying the possibility for:
(i) appropriate software to automatically decode any message parameters not in plain
language prior to or upon delivery of distress alerts to RCCs; and
(ii) appropriate software to automatically retrieve supporting emergency data on ships in
distress from available databases prior to or upon delivery of distress alerts to RCCs.