- Anglo-Eastern Ship management chief information officer Torbjorn Dimblad said Anglo-Eastern has had to quickly adapt its ship management practices in the global pandemic.
- Under normal circumstances, Anglo-Eastern would visit each ship under its management three times per year.
- Across our global fleet that amounts to about 2,000 visits per year. With a pandemic raging and restrictions on travel, that number has been reduced to just several hundred.
- Anglo-Eastern has used many of the digital and video conferencing technologies that others have used during the pandemic to replace face-to-face interactions.
A recent news article published in the Riviera deals with the five challenges shipowners face in implementing digital strategy. These were the views expressed by four panellists at the Connectivity for remote management and support webinar, part of Riviera Maritime Media’s Vessel Optimisation Webinar Week.
Vessel Optimisation Webinar Week
The webinar was produced with support from Scale Computing on 7 December.
“With the expectation that we will not return to normal operations across the fleet until 2022, the opportunity now is to incorporate and embed these into a broader digital strategy for remote collaboration, and engagement,” said Mr Dimblad.
Mr Dimblad cited five major challenges shipping must overcome to properly implement its broader digital strategy.
- bandwidth
- signal consistency on board
- modernisation of legacy IT systems
- cyber security and cost
- durability and availability of ATEX Zone 1-certified smart devices.
All five challenges would need to be underpinned by capex.
Need for modern collaboration
He said while VSAT supports the bandwidth required for modern collaboration platforms, it remains very expensive, meaning “owners will still pay significant costs to get the bandwidth and data bundles that allow for real-time communication.”
Call for good cyber security
Equally pressing for owners are issues around cyber security and the continuing threat from cyber criminals. “Securing the networks and the nodes that connect to them is an incredibly important challenge that we must all rise and collectively meet,” he said.
Challenges as goals for Anglo-Eastern
These challenges have become goals for Anglo-Eastern, which has implemented several digital and IT initiatives in 2020.
Among these are deploying intrinsically safe smartphones across its tanker fleet to support remote inspections, installing 4G equipment to complement its VSAT service and deploying a standard operating environment for the business network on board.
Members agree with Anglo-Eastern’s view
Scale Computing vice president EMEA Johan Pellicaan agreed with Mr Dimblad that cyber security was a chief concern to the maritime industry. He cited numbers showing that cyber attacks on shipping had increased over 900% over the last couple of years.
Using digital tools augment reality
Mr Camporeale said that while this shift brought with it major challenges, it also represented major opportunities.
As an example, Mr Camporeale cited strides by class societies in using digital tools and systems such as helmets and smart devices that use augmented reality, live streaming, video and audio to conduct remote inspections and surveys.
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Source: Riviera
