Position Report

A position report is the periodic statement of a vessel’s position, course, and speed sent to a reporting authority, a VTS, an owner, or a routing service, often in a fixed format such as the AMVER SP report or an IMO standard ship-reporting format. The position is given in latitude and longitude with the time in UTC. Mandatory ship-reporting systems adopted under SOLAS V/11 require participation in defined areas; the report supports search-and-rescue coverage and traffic management.