Big data's time has come Posted on : Jun 02 - 2015

Big data and the connectivity of ships with computerised operating systems are the two big things expected to come into shipping over the next five to ten years, according to a panel of maritime experts at the Nor-Shipping conference.

But Oskar Levander, vice president of innovation, engineering and technology at Rolls Royce, added that big data was only an enabler for the intelligent ship.

And Heikki Soljama, managing director ABB marine and ports, told TradeWinds everyone has the same ideas, “but it is still a question of who is going to be able to get it done. It is down to companies taking the risks.”

Panelists in the discussion agreed that a lot is already technically possible, but it will still take time to bring technology to the industry.

Levander admits there are still challenges with the reliability of shore to ship connections for sending data. It might be possible to remotely control a small coastal ship in three or four years time, but it will probably take a lot longer for the regulations to be changed to allow it, especially in deepsea operations.

“The unmanned ship is not yet a reality because situational awareness is still so important when approaching ports,” added Tor Svensen, chief executive of DNV GL Maritime.

Kongsberg Gruppen chief executive Walter Qvam said the shipping industry has tended to over-estimate how quickly changes could come and then under-estimate how big the changes are when they arrived.

He says the real changes are already now possible in terms of intelligent maintenance, but that open source architecture is required to speed the ability to develop systems. View more