Category "Trends"
One of the most challenging issues currently facing cruise shipping companies is air pollution in ports. Cruises through the Mediterranean, Baltic or Caribbean involve port calls in any number of tourist hotspots, and it’s not just in popular stop-offs such as Venice that the locals are getting worked up about air pollution from cruise ships moored close to city centres. SOx, NOx and fine-particle emissions from ships are a growing concern, not just to environmental activists.
One way of significantly reducing emissions is to install LNG-powered engines – and the world’s first LNG-powered cruise liner, the 183,900-ton AIDANOVA, is currently under construction at the Meyer Shipyard in Papenburg in NW Germany. The engine room for this cruise ship was recently completed at the Neptun Shipyard in Rostock on Germany’s Baltic coast. Then on 26 September, this 120-metre long and 42-metre broad section of the ship containing the four LNG-powered Caterpillar MaK engines passed through the Kiel Canal en route to Papenburg. It was a tricky trip. The maximum breadth for ships passing through the Kiel Canal is only 32 metres, but with a special permit and less than 1 metre of leeway on each side, the floating engine room section was safely steered through the Canal by two tugs, the RT PIONEER and BUGSIER 6. With the safe arrival of the engine room in Papenburg another important step was taken towards lowering emissions from cruise shipping. The AIDANOVA is due to go into service in November 2018.
One of today’s biggest buzzwords is Big Data. But what exactly does it mean? And where does Big Data start? As a data-driven company, we’d like to give you a quick introduction to the world of Big Data – and tell you how it can be good for your business.
What is Big Data? Maybe we should start by defining when data is big. Of course opinions vary but one common definition is that data are big when they don’t fit onto one disk – and that means anything in excess of 5 terabyte (TB). But what does a number like that mean in practice? If Google were to catalogue and index all the books in the world, it would be impossible to load all this data onto a single data. That’s certainly Big Data.
Big Data have been around for some time but it’s only in recent years that the advances in computing power and artificial intelligence (AI) have made data science a really useful discipline that enables Big Data to be put to good use. Physics, and in particular astrophysics, was one of the fields where Big Data were first collected and, interestingly enough, many data scientists used to be post-doc physicists.
So how does data science work? Put simply, it involves taking raw data and processing it to produce a data set from which statistical models can be developed, analyses undertaken or machine learning predictions generated. Based on these findings, data scientists can develop data-driven products and/or communicate what they’ve learned via reports, blogs or visualisations. Good data science teams – and data scientists usually work in teams – have a number of skills: knowing which questions to ask; interpreting the data collected well; and understanding the structure of data. This is what is known as substantive expertise. And that’s what we’ve got at FleetMon – as well as lots of Big Data. We process 3,500 AIS reports per second – that’s 300 million a day – and store over 100 TB of raw AIS data or around 410 billion reports in all! And what good is that for your business? As a FleetMon customer you can view every single AIS report for the past three years or so. And that’s just one way you benefit from our Big Data.
The recently published PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) German Shipping Survey 2017 revealed that one in two German shipping companies have already been heavily impacted by digitalisation and 84% expect online portals to grow in importance.
Once a year, PwC publishes its survey of German shipping companies. This report published in July 2017 highlighted the increasing impact of digitalisation on shipping. More than 80% of German shipping companies expect online applications soon to become a matter of course for customers, e.g. booking sea-borne transport via an online portal. The shipping companies interviewed have been impacted to a differing extent by the rise of the digital economy. Around half said they had been affected by major changes, 41% less so and 10% felt they had not been affected at all.
PwC highlights the dangers of ignoring digitalisation, pointing out that far too many shipping companies are lulling themselves into a false sense of security by thinking that digitalisation will simply sail by and leave their traditional business models unaffected. Although 57% of the interviewees judged themselves to be digitally competent, 43% suspected digital deficiencies and thought they weren’t well equipped for the challenges of the digital economy. A PwC expert quoted in the report believes that the platform effect evident in other industries could well become a feature of shipping.
This is where FleetMon can provide valuable assistance. Dozens of online platforms already exist for ship owners, operators or charterers to upload their content. At FleetMon we already have the relevant content, e.g. ETAs, historical tracking data, event handling, alerting, etc. It’s there for you to access – and equip yourself for the digitalised future of shipping.
By the way, this PwC survey also brought some good news: over 70% of the interviewees predicted global ship-borne cargo volumes would increase over the next five years. With light now appearing at the end of the shipping tunnel it’s a good time to invest in digitalisation to avoid any digital deficiencies.
© copyright by Deepwater Wind
Block Island success
December 12, 2016 was a memorable milestone in the history of America’s clean renewable energy industry. It was the day when Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm became the first offshore wind farm to deliver energy to the American power grid. Located off the shore of Rhode Island, the five offshore wind turbines that make up Block Island Wind Farm are now delivering electricity to the New England grid on a regular basis. The power produced by this pioneering wind farm is transmitted to the grid via a new sea-to-shore submarine cable system. This historic project was the result of two years of work involving more than 300 workers in the development, construction and commissioning of Block Island Wind Farm. Such a project also generates a great many vessel movements, which is where FleetMon came in. Read more…
We are permanently expanding our Terrestrial AIS Network!
To keep you updated, here’s an overview of this Month new AIS stations:
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We are permanently expanding our Terrestrial AIS Network!
To keep you updated, here’s an overview of this Month new AIS stations:
Read more…
The cruise industry has been experiencing especially dynamic development.
Within just 10 years, the number of passengers has tripled. In Germany alone, more than 1.77 million people took part on an ocean cruise in 2014.Read more…
Container vessels represent a type of ship which transport standardized ISO containers. Their cargo capacity is measured in TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units).Today, more than 90 % percent of the trade between countries is carried by container ships. The largest vessels are nearly 1313 feet long and can carry more than 20 000 TEU. All container vessels represented in the following density map are over 330 feet long.
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Here is Orbcomms press release from 2015-12-22,
Second mission completes OG2 constellation to provide global M2M messaging and AIS services
Rochelle Park, NJ, December 21, 2015 – ORBCOMM Inc. (Nasdaq: ORBC), a global provider of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things T) solutions, today announced that it has successfully launched eleven next generation OG2 satellites from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida at 8:29 pm ET. The eleven OG2 satellites were successfully separated from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle into the proper insertion orbit.
“Today marks a significant milestone for our company. We’d like to thank our vendors and partners for their cooperation in this effort,” said Marc Eisenberg, ORBCOMM’s Chief Executive Officer. “I’d also like to commend the ORBCOMM team for their hard work and dedication in making our second OG2 mission a success. Lastly, I’d like to congratulate SpaceX on making history by landing the Falcon 9’s reusable Stage one booster from a record altitude. It’s an exciting day for all of us in the space industry.”
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In short the private space agency SpaceX just brought up all 11 ORBCOMM OG2 satellites in nominal orbits and landed the first stage of its Falcon rocket successfully back on earth.
Think about that and all it’s implications: you fire up satellites into orbit and instead of throwing your expensive rocket into the ocean and build another one … you just land it, refuel it and give it another shot. What a giant leap!
Beside the fact that some nations couldn’t even build airports anymore (no names here), that is quite impressive.
For more information about SpaceX and the grand master Elon Musk, please read this article … the most funny and brainful stuff you will find.
And what about those ORBCOMM satellites?
Those OG2 satellites are quite small next generation M2M-satellites, which form the backbone of a growing dedicated machine-2-machine communication network. This new generation of OG2 satellites provides more bandwidth, better coverage and less power consumption.
But what we at FleetMon.com love even more, is that every OG2 satellite is equipped with an AIS payload to receive and report transmissions from AIS-equipped vessels.
Read more…
