Data, digital twins and artificial intelligence will reshape everything in maritime from regulation to operating procedures challenging the industry to respond to a new safety protection frontier, according to ABS Chairman and CEO Christopher J Wiernicki, speaking at an event in London.
Wiernicki said: “AI’s ability to generate real time insights, risk assessments and behaviour monitoring will improve hazard detection through visualisation. Digital twins will be used to provide an operational representation of current performance and to project forward. This predictive ability allows us to tackle the major boundary condition of digitalisation and decarbonisation – the unintended safety consequences of rapid technological advance.”
Wiernicki explained that embracing a fully digital operating model will fundamentally alter the nature of safety.
He added: “Safety going forward will not be defined as just the absence of accidents but as the new equation of capacity and capability over demand. The new equation has systems thinking, well trained people and percentage usage of digital in the numerator representing capacity and capability. Demand is in the denominator representing the complexity of an evolving decarbonisation trajectory and rapidly changing technology environment. Our future safety protection frontier is defined as the place where capacity and capability equal demand. Safety is becoming more synonymous with cybersecurity and reliability.”
Wiernicki see a potential prize for maritime in significant safety advances.
He continued: “I believe this new forward-looking, predictive safety frontier represents nothing less than a paradigm shift in the performance of our industry, with the potential to unlock huge safety gains. But there remains significant work to be done in training, systems development and cybersecurity, to mention a few areas, to ensure the industry is able to fully capitalise on the opportunity before us.”
Image: Christopher J Wiernicki, ABS Chairman and CEO, speaking at the Capital Link Shipping and Marine Services Forum (credit: ABS)
