Legal Basis

The requirements concerning LRIT have been introduced into SOLAS, Chapter V ("Safety of Navigation"), Regulation 19-1. In accordance with Paragraph 8.1 of Regulation 19-1, "Contracting Governments shall be able to receive long-range identification and tracking information about ships for security and other purposes as agreed by the Organization". Such "other purposes" would for instance include Search and Rescue (SAR), as explicitly mentioned in the new SOLAS provisions, as well as maritime safety in general and marine environment protection purposes as agreed by Resolution MSC 242(83) adopted on 12 October 2007. The IMO LRIT requires that all passenger ships including high speed craft, cargo ships of 300 gross tonnage and above, mobile offshore drilling units should automatically transmit every 6 hours the identity of the ship, the position report and data and time of the position.

Furthermore, IMO also adopted on 19 May 2006, Resolution MSC 210 (81) amended and modified by MSC 254(83) which establishes performance standards and functional requirements for the LRIT of ships. This states that all LRIT Data Centres and the LRIT International Data Exchange should conform to functional requirements not inferior to those specified in the Annex to the Resolution.

The performance standards were then revised through Resolution MSC 263(84) adopted on May 2008 - Revised performance Standards and functional requirements for the LRIT of ships (this revokes MSC 210(81), MSC 254(83)). The system specifies that 4 position messages per day are stored and available for those actors entitled to access the LRIT information. The international LRIT system receives, stores and disseminates LRIT information on behalf of all Contracting SOLAS Governments.

The list of documents below provides an indication of some of the relevant legal texts. More information can be found on the relevant page of the IMO website: