Data-based, objective decision-making can illuminate the way forward for owners and operators faced with market volatility and the uncertainty surrounding decarbonisation.

With increasing complexity and uncertainty in the market, owners, operators and charterers need solutions that can help them maintain profitability, cut their environmental impact and make sense of change – all at the same time.

Imminent priorities like CII require immediate action just at a time when long-term plans have never been more difficult to execute. Companies need solutions, and there is a profusion of potential candidates, but few are mature or flexible enough to meet short and long-term goals.

To navigate this complexity, shipping companies need data and the objectivity that data can provide. Being objective means being impartial, fair, and neutral, and these qualities are founded in the comprehensive and logical interpretation of data. Objective decision-making is sensible, defensible decision-making.

With good data, shipping companies can identify opportunities, act on evidence and trends, measure the success of their actions and learn from them. This is why data-driven digital technologies are taking a new and central role in shipping, creating a lifeline of stability through competing forces too complex to predict and control.

Strategic goals can be transparently and measurably set under circumstances where humans would find it nearly impossible to achieve the same results, especially on continuous daily, weekly, monthly and yearly timescales.

Decisions can be based on up-to-the minute reality rather than being a best guess based on historical performance. Volatility can be interpreted logically, not responded to with flawed assertions or impulses.

Data can be deployed to support any organisational strategy – making it a true commercial differentiator and driver of change – and a constant anchor for sensible business practices. It is also scalable and can support the requirements of a fleet of five vessels as easily as a fleet of five hundred.

Connecting the dots

Digital platforms act as a connecting point for previously siloed stakeholders, consolidating processes across the maritime value chain into one source of intelligence for everyone’s benefit.

Pelle Sommansson

The sharing of ship performance data can, for example, help charterers make more informed and more assured decisions on their chartered fleets. They need to forecast the estimated fuel consumption of an upcoming voyage and predict a vessel’s profitability.

Digitalisation has reached the point now where machine learning can be used over a billion data points to predict expected fuel consumption for any vessel, no matter its itinerary, route, or condition. Data spanning vessel reports, high frequency sensor data, weather data, AIS signals, port stays, dry-dock and hull cleaning events, can all be combined to forecast the expected operational fuel consumption of a vessel.

This is particularly important for spot charters, where accurate performance data has been traditionally difficult to acquire and base decisions on.

The granularity that can now be achieved will enable the sector to optimise voyages around new pressures like CII and will also build a solid foundation from which the industry can collectively make more sustainable business decisions.

Internal optimisation

Data shows us where the potential for change lies within organisations and processes. No company or operation is perfectly optimised; there is always room for improvement. Decisions on where and when to bunker are a good demonstration of this point.

The bunker market is becoming increasingly complex and volatile on the back of the energy transition and geopolitical uncertainties, and it requires specific expertise. Digital platforms can match suppliers with ports and facilitate communication between master, bunker desk, and operator. Digital analysis can provide real-time bunker prices and can handle general bunker enquiry management from procurement to payment, including contracts, fuel tests and quality reporting and audit trails. This increases efficiency and reduces risk for ship operators, and it can also provide robust reporting against internal corporate goals.

Efficient utilisation of energy and fuel consumption during daily operations is another critical factor in vessel performance that can benefit from digital data analysis. Machine learning can be used to generate actionable insights on how to improve operational procedures and better manage the condition of onboard equipment, enabling owners and operators to reduce fuel consumption and emissions from their fleets and unlock more sustainable, efficient and profitable voyages. This includes hull condition, a key area for vessel performance management due to its significant impact on fuel consumption. Operational data can be used for hull monitoring with real-time risk assessment and alerts for long idle periods.

In these many ways, data and digital technologies can unite sustainability and profitability goals, generating tangible impact in the near-term and creating the potential for efficiencies to be reinvested into either the process of decarbonisation or into ensuring business continuity.

It’s why we mustn’t be afraid of shipping’s data revolution, but embrace it full-force – throwing our weight behind the solutions, systems, processes and mindset shifts we need to entrench and underpin objective decision-making in an ever-more complex marketplace.

Source: Article By Pelle Sommansson, Chief Product & AI Officer, ZeroNorth

Marex Media