Classification society ClassNK has announced that it established the Ship Data Center in Tokyo, Japan, on 7 December 2015, a[ds_preview] wholly owned subsidiary that aims to support the utilization of data gathered from ship operations.
Thanks to rapid advances in the development of information and communication technologies, it is now possible to collect large volumes of data on a diverse range of items related to ship operations the company stated. However, the approach to data capture is still very fragmented with similar data being sent to several vendors and analysis still being carried out almost entirely on a ship-by-ship basis.
In the opinion of ClassNK to make larger gains, an effective platform capable of centralizing and managing such diverse data is essential. However, creating and maintaining this kind of platform is costly, time-consuming and unrealistic for some organizations. Moreover, special care needs to be given to the handling of data to ensure confidentiality of information; hence it is also necessary to establish a secure yet effective platform from an impartial perspective.
According to the classification society trials of the Data Center will commence on a container vessel in February 2016 in cooperation with a Japanese shipping company. Various information including data from the ship’s voyage data recorder and data logger will be gathered from the vessel. Full operation of the Data Center is scheduled from April 2016.
