Getting back in sync

A recent publication from Lloyd’s Register, one of the leading classification societies, and two collaborators, provides a look at how technologies might evolve over the next 15 years. In its just released Global Marine Technology Trends 2030, the authors offer informed views on a business infused with internet devices that is far more automated than at present.

Though LR does not look for humans to be eliminated, it sees a role for a far more data intensive business than at present, with industry leaders opting for smart ships. Clearly, technologists are more focused on vessel operation than port practices. Carriers today do not choose a port solely because of its technological prowess, or lack of.

As an industry, we did not anticipate the crippling impact of 13,000 teu megaships on infrastructure, but, in retrospect, someone on the port side should have been thinking ahead. Similarly, we are not focused enough on what ills Big Data and remote ship operations/monitoring will inflict on the vessel/port interface.

In an effort to learn from all of our collective mistakes, I suggest that we should not repeat our failures. The technologies are very enticing, and the authors’ expertise gives them the bona fides for their forecasts to be taken seriously. Not only should we be preparing for calamities – or at least trying to anticipate what they might be – we should be creating opportunities and sharing them at a high level with vessel designers.

One area that comes to mind is ‘advanced manufacturing’, which overlaps with part of the report’s predictions on shipbuilding issues. Could large containerships be designed in such a way to smooth the flow of cargo, or to improve their manoeuvrability around, in and out of harbours? Are there ways to harness improved information technologies to re-invent the interfaces between vessel operations and terminal procedures?

Let’s get thinking about, discussing, and then communicating ideas to the vessel side of the business sooner, rather than discovering some new morass wrought by new technologies. 2030 will be upon us sooner than we all think.