Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered. Today’s question: how will artificial intelligence impact the maritime industry?
Trade and tariffs are headlines across the globe. Trade and tariff share a common feature—shipping. Hence, now is a perfect time to examine AI trends within the maritime industry.
According to Spire Maritime, a firm dedicated to providing a wide range of services to the industry, maritime companies linger in Ai adoption. Spire Maritime claims the maritime industry is now moving fast, hopefully faster than a cargo ship, in incorporating AI, Large Language Models, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). In a very recent report, Thetius, a well-known maritime consultancy, says the maritime AI market is valued at $4.1B. The good news is $4.1B represents a substantial increase from just $1.4B two years ago. Moreover, 36 shipping companies have implemented or plan to deploy AI-enabled tech this year.
Let’s briefly examine possible AI use cases in the maritime industry.
Automation. For example, in the future could AI lead to autonomous navigation? The labor savings could be significant. Or perhaps more immediately, AI could be used to automate mundane tasks such as detection of vessel names, contact information, shipowner, and technical specifications. With AI maintenance and repairs and anticipated well in advance thus reducing vessel down time.
Replacement of Manual Inputs with Data-Driven Predictive Information. Spire Maritime points to the extensive reliance of human, often error-prone inputs as pervasive in maritime. Rather than manual inputs, AI could be used to determine route optimization based on weather, fuel consumption, speed, and safety considerations. The fuel savings alone could be significant not to mention the safety of crews nor the favorable impact on the environment.
Detection of Patterns or Anomalies Using Data. The maritime industry generate billions of data points. Consider for a moment the millions of containers processed at a major port, such as the Port of Los Angeles, where I worked for three years. Now multiply that by the hundreds of ports around world. The data is overwhelming. Making sense of the data and turning it into actionable information is the power of AI.
These are all great use case possibilities, so why the delay or hesitation? The answer boils down to several considerations:
- Data Quality and Accessibility. As in many industries, the maritime industry faces issues regarding inconsistent or incomplete data.
- Integration with Existing Systems. The maritime industry is ancient and as are its legacy technologies. Integrating the new without disruption is a daunting task.
- Data Standardization. Worldwide industry are often replete with inconsistent standards, maritime is no exception.
- Industry-wide Collaboration. Can you image the collaboration required to effectively implement AI in the maritime industry; an industry with dozens of stakeholders, including shipping companies, port authorities, tech providers, etc.
- Trust. Can the technology be trusted with safety decisions, automation, etc.
Time to go, but first a proverb from a nation with an important maritime industry; the island nation of Malta where they say:
Until next time,
Yogi Nelson
https://www.lr.org/en/knowledge/research-reports/2024/beyond-the-horizon/
https://www.mitags.org/ai-impact-maritime-industry/
https://www.adv-polymer.com/blog/artificial-intelligence-in-shipping
https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2024/12/utilizing-ai-for-maritime-transport-optimization/
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