A sea-faring vessel using a variety of sensors to manage its regular processes and navigation is a smart ship. Uses of this IoT technology range from single vessel to fleet management. However, even management of a single ship involves using massive amounts of data.
Smart ships can automate fuel reminders, cargo monitoring, and employee scheduling and management. It also includes predictive maintenance, navigation, and communication between ships and managers or between ships and ports. In short, smart ships improve vessel, fleet, crew, and passenger safety while maximizing efficiency.
An effective smart ship requires a number and variety of sensors and monitors. Sensors may include cargo RFID readers and GPS sensors. Monitors, meanwhile, may record moisture, humidity, sonar, and CO2 emissions. The ship’s cargo and route will determine which sensors are necessary or helpful.
Most external data include points of interest along shipping or cruise routes, for planned or surprise stops to restock, refuel, or seek refuge.
Another vital data source is weather data. Weather forecasts, in particular, help immensely in smart ship management.
Additional useful data sources may include local news along specific sea routes and of the countries that port destinations are in. Countries may change their entry requirements due to Covid-19, for example. Or, political protests may block or delay docking or unloading.
The main challenge of this use case is the huge amount of data generated that must be updated and analyzed in real time. Even on a single ship, the amount of data can seem overwhelming; managing an entire fleet only more so.
Further, when a ship or a fleet can only be updated with IoT technology piecemeal, the various sensors may not integrate well with each other or with a ship’s motherboard. Converting various data sources into one format automatically and seamlessly, therefore, can be difficult.
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Mr. Sang-yong Kim, the director of marineworks said, “In order to realize the complete automation and efficient configuration of the ship’s IoT platform, not only the program development but also the optimal configuration of the ship’s integrated network, navigation/engine, alarms and cargo information are optimized to process more than 4 million cases of data per day.”