This paper was presented at the World Congress of the International Association of Institutes of Navigation (IAIN) held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 17–21 November 1997.

Remote, or shore-based, pilotage means different things to different people, despite a definition being produced by the European and International Maritime Pilots Associations. The debate about it is set in the context of increasing public awareness of the environment and a downward pressure on costs; these in themselves make for uncomfortable bedfellows. However, this sets the scene for the current aspirations within the European Union for vessel traffic management and the ongoing research into Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) and Vessel Traffic Management and Information Services (VTMIS). The technology to implement navigational assistance of a fairly high order is already in place, but there are still problems to be overcome before the concept can be taken further. Commonly recurring concerns over remote pilotage are the inadequacies of radar, difficulties with language, lack of ‘feel’ for the ship, which includes the on-board pilot's assessment of the quality of the vessel's crew, and the lack of ship motion data. Differential GPS is now capable of aiding automatic docking of some specialized vessels, but it has emerged, most recently at the IALA VTS Committee meeting, that ECDIS has shortcomings when being considered as the geographic information system of a VTS. Transponders are the subject of yet another debate, but will the data that they can convey be able to replace an on-board pilot?