Page 54: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2019)

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PRODUCTS MARINE ELECTRONICS

Ship IoT Tech: Enabling Proactive

Approach to Navigation Safety

The airline industry has long employed ? ight data to monitor navigational and operational practices for evaluation and feedback to pilots using a system called Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA).

Now a similar concept is coming into the shipping industry. Danelec Marine, a manufacturer of voyage data recorders (VDR) and electronic chart display and information system (ECDIS) products, this month unveiled a new Bridge Operational Quality Assurance (BOQA) system. Hans Ottosen, CEO, explains.

To start, please provide background on Danelec.

Danelec Marine was one of the ? rst companies to

Hans Ottosen, CEO, Danelec bring to market VDRs to meet the original IMO car- riage requirements in 2002. Since then, we’ve sup- plied more than 6,000 VDRs and S-VDRs. In recent extracted from the Danelec server into the BOQA years we broadened our marine portfolio with ECDIS software, which uses advanced analytical tools to re- products and a universal ship Internet of Things (IoT) cord and visualize shipboard events.

platform, which we call DanelecConnect.

How does BOQA work in typical applications?

BOQA is basically a decision-support tool designed

What led you to develop the BOQA concept?

In 2013, the Oil Companies International Marine Fo- to enhance maritime safety and enable proactive de- rum (OCOMF) submitted a paper entitled The Proac- cision-making in bridge operations by automatically tive Use of Voyage Data Recorder Information to the recording and analyzing shipboard events.

IMO. The paper called for transmission of data from The BOQA platform encompasses six broad event

VDRs (excepting voice recordings and radar images) categories. They are navigation events, AIS events, over the Internet to shore for analysis. This subset of compliance events, weather events, motion events and

VDR data would be small enough to facilitate cost-ef- customized safety events. The system can be set up for fective ship-to-shore transmission over satellite chan- daily reports and/or instant alarms for each event type.

nels, thereby giving the potential for 24/7 monitoring. Taking navigational events as an example, reports

Shipping companies could auto-analyze data against include breaches of cross-track error parameters and established standard operating procedures (SOPs). safety corridors, departures from the ECDIS active

The OCIMF paper identi? ed speci? c examples of pa- route, penetration of no-go zones, deviations from rameters, including minimum depth beneath the keel, speed and heading in the active route and unscheduled maximum rate of turn or rudder angle at full speed, stops and starts. AIS event reports can reveal inci- compliance with routing requirements and following dents of collision risks from CPA and TCPA. Weather the approved voyage plan. The OCIMF-proposed sys- events can include high winds and heavy weather on tem would provide alerts to shore management if non- the ship’s route. Motion events include list, roll, rate conformances are identi? ed, and it would enable the of turn and transverse accelerations.

shipping company to provide feedback to the ship’s The shipping company can use the actionable master and navigation of? cers as a learning experi- BOQA reports to create a formal proactive approach ence to avoid future mistakes and enhance safety. to operational risk management in ship navigation

OQA is similar in concept to what was envisioned in practices and procedures, with a feedback loop to the the OCIMF paper six years ago. It’s a scalable cloud- ship’s master to help avoid future accidents and im- based event reporting, analysis and feedback solution, prove navigational safety of the ship.

which uses data from the ship and analytical tools to

What’s the status of BOQA now?

identify deviations from operational parameters.

We are currently running initial tests on vessels of ? ve different shipping companies with positive re-

What are the key elements in your BOQA offering?

A key enabling technology underpinning BOQA is sults. Feedback from these ship trials will help us ? ne-

DanelecConnect, a shipboard hub that collects data tune the package. Some of our customers have also from the VDR and other data sources. Its open archi- suggested that we include a pro? ling of each of? cer tecture accepts serial, digital and analog data without based on the BOQA data in order to customize the special custom interfaces. With DanelecConnect, a ongoing training the individual of? cer. Importantly, ship can collect and transmit hundreds or even thou- we’ve built in a capacity for the system to “learn.” sands of data sets via satellite to Danelec’s cloud- Thus, new types of unforeseen events can be devel- based server ashore for less than a dollar per day in oped by applying machine learning and arti? cial intel- airtime costs. An API interface allows the data to be ligence methods. 54 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • JUNE 2019

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