Class NK Opens Centre to Support Big Data for the Maritime Industry

ClassNK's newly opened Ship Data Center is said to support the utilisation of data gathered from ship operations.

Classification society Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK) Monday announced that it has opened the Ship Data Center Co., Ltd. (Ship Data Center) in Tokyo, Japan in order to support the maritime industry's utilisation of data gathered from ship operations.

The centre, which will be headed by ClassNK Executive Vice President Yasushi Nakamura, will feature a secured shipping operations database, said to allow the centre to serve as an information hub that can independently manage big data utilisation for the maritime industry.

ClassNK says that, although technological advancements have made it possible to collect large amounts of data for a diverse range of metrics related to ship operations, "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."

"Through the Centre's integrated data, the industry can maximise the benefits of big data with minimum cost and burden," explained ClassNK in the announcement.

Not only will the data centre help with optimisation of ship operations and improving condition-based monitoring of machinery, says ClassNK, but it could also be used in other applications to help the maritime industry address existing and approaching challenges, such as the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) regulation.

ClassNK says the Ship Data Center intends to offer shipowners and operators subject to the MRV data collection requirement, which comes into force January 1, 2018, "a secure and neutral database in which to store and manage these vast amounts of fuel consumption data."

The classification society explains that, in cooperation with a Japanese shipping company, centre trials will begin in February 2016, beginning with a container vessel. 

It is reported that, during the initial trial, various information will be collected from the container ship, such as data from the ship's voyage data recorder and data logger.

The Ship Data Center is reported to be scheduled for full operation beginning in April 2016.

In April, Ship & Bunker reported that Paolo Tonon, head of Maersk Maritime Technology (MMT), is looking to "big data" to bring bunker bills down, among other applications.