The history
The Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race has been an annual event since 1949. The yachts have been tracked since the very first race and where competitors were required to carry homing pigeons and release two pigeons per day. It is interesting how the same requirement exists over six decades later and technology has taken the place of pigeons.
ESRI Australia's involvement with the race started back in 2004, with the technologies of choice for the race were ArcIMS and ArcSDE. This decision was largely made based on the success of ArcIMS in the GIS industry - there was no ArcGIS Server back then. It really is quite incredible to see how far the technology has advanced over the last 5 years. In 2004, we wanted to track the boats live using GPS tracking technologies, but cost became a factor very early on and the decision was made to just track the boats at 6 hour intervals based on the sked reports (a sked report is a scheduled radio transmission from each boat to race control outlining their position). These reports are used by race control to ensure the safety of the fleet. If a boat were to get into difficulties then race control has a last known position for the yacht. The system in 2004 was very basic and simply plotted the boats on a dynamic map service and was delivered through the basic HTML/Javascript viewer. Some modifications were made to the viewer to simplify it and make it more aesthetically pleasing.
Over the next couple of years the site started to use ArcGIS Server. The capabilities ArcGIS Server exposed in the way of ArcObjects meant that more capability could be added to the site. And so the decision was made to start looking at the average speed that boats had made during the sked intervals, and then try to predict the boats' finishing times. This proved to be an instant hit with media as they started to see a race unfold. The problem was the race was finishing too quickly and with sked data only coming every 6 hours, the predictions could be inaccurate and untimely. Often the latest update fell outside the deadlines for television and print media.
In mid 2007, a partnership was born between ESRI Australia and Pivotel. These leading edge organisations combined their skills to provide the first short interval tracking system for a yacht race in Queensland. Pivotel had the technology, and hardware using a system called TracerTrak, to track the boats. ESRI Australia had the location intelligence capabilities in the form of analysis and visualisation. The two companies worked closely to provide the Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race with positional updates every 15 minutes (a feat never achieved in the races history).
Many challenges were faced during development for last year's race tracker. No estimates could predict the success the site would see in the public arena. A post race analysis showed us that the weekend's user base extended into the hundred of thousands, which was a 1000% increase in traffic in one year. Despite the challenges faced, the race organisers found the tracking capability was an excellent addition to the race, with the profile of the race raised significantly and constant praise from users commented on the coverage being better than ever.
Find out more about the GIS technology involved