The International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) is a non-profit, international technical association in the field of marine aids to navigation. Founded in 1957, IALA gathers together authorities, manufacturers, consultants, and scientific and training institutes from all over the world, offering them the opportunity to exchange and compare their experiences and achievements.
Many standardized identification schemes exist for vessels, buoys, mariners and other maritime resources already, but there is no single system that allows people to specify such an identifier in a uniform and unambiguous way. We believe that it makes sense to introduce a naming scheme that can uniquely identify any maritime resource on a global scale.
A "maritime resource" can be anything that has an identity, including organizations, employees, people, physical objects, virtual objects (such as electronic documents), buoys, ships, mariners, nautical charts and electronic services (e.g., "today's weather report for the Oresund Strait"). Of course, not all resources are "retrievable" in an electronic sense; human beings, corporations, and buoys would be obvious examples. However, all of these can still be considered resources.
Having a uniform naming scheme will pave the way for new maritime digital information services, facilitating innovation, integration, trade, safety, and security in the maritime sector. This document defines such a naming system based on Uniform Resource Names (URNs).