This week Fathom Maritime Intelligence hosted the next installment of the global Smart Operations event series in Singapore. Over 100 delegates joined the myriad of smart shipping discussions, in the first smart operations event to be held in Singapore.
In this week’s spotlight feature we present a selection of key topics that were addressed and issues that were discussed by speakers and delegates alike.
Next week Part Two of Smart Operations Singapore: The Debrief will be published which will present further key topics and issues discussed.
First Unmanned Cargo Vessel To Hit Water By End of Decade
Rolls Royce’s VP of Innovation, Engineering and Technology Oskar Levander has stated that the first type of unmanned cargo vessels will hit the water by 2020.
Levander told delegates that the next revolution will be ship intelligence. The outright function of which is making shipping more efficient and safe.
In delivering his point he drew delegate’s minds to the development of the global trade-changing shipping container in the late 1950’s. This industry-changing technology took almost a decade to get movement in the industry, but yet has done more for the industry than any political progression. So, he questioned, will the evolution and application of ship intelligence be quicker or slower than that of the shipping container.
He highlighted the fact that in other industries, it has been quicker than that decade.
When touching upon the progression of other industries in comparison to shipping, Levander reflected that the move to unmanned is in fact a trend in society. For shipping, we may be approaching it at a slower rate compared to some other industries but the industry will get there and when the industry does it will evolve quicker than any other industry. He reminded that unmanned technology is not new to marine. His message, for the maritime industry is that it is a case of when, not if.
For Levander, this aspect of “when”, with regard to unmanned cargo vessels, is within the next decade.
Ship Efficiency Data: Garbage In = Garbage Out
The managing director of Norwegian software company Tero Marine sent a strong advisory message to the industry: “when it comes to data, garbage in = garbage out”.
Jan Erik Harvei is a man that knows a lot about data quality and his message to event attendees was that the input of better quality data gives ship owners better information that is better to use as an output.
He reminded however that better data quality inputs is reliant on adequate crew training.
Harvei also stated that he welcomes he integration of softwares and platforms, stating that they would integrate their solutions with their competitors.
Smart Ships: No Longer a Future Fantasy
Smart ships are no longer a fantasy of the future but are the reality of our industry, said Vinay Gupta, Managing Director, Union Marine.
He made these remarks whilst opening the Smart Operations Conference.
Gupta knows what he is talking about. He started Union Marine Management Services just four years ago and already had nearly 30 vessels under management.
The rapid expansion has been enabled by a simple, clear vision to operate clean, safe and happy ships, he reflected.
A minimum requirement of the vessels that Union Marine operate is that they have an open, unlimited internet connection seeing this as an absolute requirement to meet this vision.
At the same time however Gupta recognises this is not the standard across the whole industry acknowledging that there are indeed still vessels operating without any internet.
He says with the shipping industry has been far slower to respond to developments in IT and digital technologies than land based industries.
However, Gupta believes that we need to prepare ourselves for ‘the whole package’ as digitalisation will be the industry reality.
There will be measures including cyber security that need to be taken to prepare for this future, however it will be the future.
As Gupta so eloquently puts it ‘if every cloud has a silver lining, then the silver lining in the digitalisation of shipping is that we will have a far better industry once we embrace this reality fully’.
Cyber-Security? Look Internally
Thomas Heide who is Dualog’s sales manager for the Asia region made the statement: “A cyber threat does not require a hacker” whilst presenting to Smart operations delegates.
Heide told delegates that any incident that renders data or systems unavailable should be seem as a cyber security issue.
The biggest threat, Heide said, is that any shipping operation has is from their own people. In terms of ship and shore communication the biggest threat comes particularly from the crew. This is because crew often have low awareness of the risks of data use.
Therefore in order to contain and manage the internal threats effectively, it is vital for shipping operations to have the ability to differentiate types of communication usage and manage each as a separate entity, said Heide.
He also explained that there are very easily identifiable types of ship connectivity usage. There are the business critical applications and communications which are more often than not use a company machine with identified logins. Also, there are the more ‘uncontrolled’ crew communications and internet usage. Additionally there are automated machine-to-machine data exchanges- sensor data, software updates and more.
Almost Half Of Crew Have Experienced A Cyber Breach
43% of crew have already experienced a cyber breach and 61% of companies believe that they have been breached, but not attacked yet.
These hard-hitting statics were delivered by Radio Holland’s Global Manager of Remote Services Frank Berends at the Smart Operations Singapore conference.
Berends also reminded delegates of how easy it is for people to have their passwords extracted from them through showing an engaging video that showed people on the streets being tricked out of their passwords through being asked simple questions.
The statistics that were presented were from a survey that was conducted at the Digital Ship CIO forum Rotterdam in late-2015.
Berends concluded by saying that most shipping companies now that they need to act on cybersecurity and are willing to, but face a daunting reality of not knowing where to start due to it being very complicated.
You can view the event presentations here (available from week commencing May 16, 2016)
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