Futurenautics, e-nautics and the shape of maritime technology to come…
Research considering the future of shipping is flavour of the moment, but argues guest columnist Roger Adamson of Stark Moore McMillan, it fails to get to grips with technology. Luckily there’s an App for that…
Earlier this year, Lloyd’s Register together with Qinetiq and the University of Strathclyde published the Global Marine Trends 2030 report. Ambitious and fascinating, the report took two years of research to produce and maps out a variety of potential global future scenarios in trade, politics and social development. Assessing their respective impacts upon the commercial maritime industry, it goes on to provide some insights into what shipping might look like in 2030.
It’s an interesting read, but flawed in a couple of really fundamental respects. Firstly, the report simply reinforces the idea that shipping’s cyclical bi-polar economic rollercoaster is beyond its control. Published at a time when shipping is experiencing the worst downturn in memory, no doubt this is a comforting message for many.
However, this downturn has done more to expose the often antiquated business processes and practices of shipping which are increasingly recognised as bearing significant responsibility for the industry’s woes. There are vast opportunities to improve strategy, margin and operational efficiency, and almost all of them are related to technology. Which is where the GMT2030 report really falls down.
Focussing exclusively on the global drivers external to maritime – geopolitical, economic, environmental and demographic – the report recognises technology only as a constituent part of national economics. Describing technology as ‘an enabler not a driver’ for commercial maritime, the report concludes that technological innovation such as actuators and sensors, robotics, behavioural algorithms and 3-D printing are so unforeseeable, and have such massive consequences that they rank alongside global economic collapse.
GMT2030 paints a future picture of a shipping and maritime industry as passive reactor to global drivers and circumstances, demonstrating no significant change or innovation. It sets aside the impact of new technology as disruptive but unknown, its potential implications so profound that they are incapable of being modelled. This maritime future is a depressing one. Whilst the world changes around it, shipping remains, essentially, the same.
But the reality is likely to be profoundly different. Far from being unforeseeable technology trends are already changing the complexion of shipping and business with the pace of change accelerating. From new HTS satellites to M2M or ‘The Internet of All Things’, cloud computing, nanotechnology, smart materials and the e-volution of business it is already possible to spot the maritime future on the horizon.
The transition to new, digital and technological-based standards of operation and monitoring within the maritime space being driven by regulation, commercial necessity and global change can be term ‘e-nautics’. The ‘e-nautic’ agenda comprises IMO’s move towards e-navigation and ECDIS mandation, increased use of voyage optimisation and routing software to reduce fuel costs, and the rising implementation of applications designed to streamline operations and integrate better with customer requirements and systems.
To date regulation has been the prime driver of innovation within maritime and specifically in complying with Marpol, Solas, STCW and the MLC but future mandates are challenges which can increasingly only be met by the intelligent deployment of technology solutions. (Indeed, the failure of regulations like the Ballast Water Management Convention to work as expected can be directly traced to getting the technology/problem cart/horse in the wrong order. Seemp, asset optimisation and the promised re-write of Solas have a direct technology link – but both are another story – Ed).
But for an industry considered to be operating ‘in the stone age’ by business analysts, the real opportunities, and threats, of the accelerating pace of global technological change to shipping and maritime companies have yet to be properly identified and addressed.
Far from being a sci-fi scenario, Manufacturing 3.0 is already here. 3-D printing technology – which has the potential to decimate the container shipping business model – is already being deployed by motor manufacturers and giants like GE for aero engine manufacture. (See in particular the most recent Economist Technology Quarterly – http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2013-09-07 for evidence of that – Ed)
Stark Moore McMillan calls this technology-enabled maritime future Futurenautics. Grouped around four key trends, The Sentient Ship, The Cyborg Crew, Shipistics and Business e-volution, Futurenautics includes IT-enabled trends and converging technologies both inside and outside shipping.
In order to equip senior shipping and maritime leaders and stakeholders with information and contextual analysis of these trends and the threats and opportunities they hold, a new resource by the same name is launching this autumn.
The shipping industry will change, but the extent to which it is the master of its own destiny lies in the hands of this and the coming generation of shipping and maritime leaders. In order to be successful those at the helm of maritime businesses need to be looking across their organisations at the impacts, threats and opportunities from a technology paradigm. It is crucial that they are encouraged and helped to understand how this should shape their future strategies.
I’ll take a deeper dive into the four key trends, the underlying technologies, impacts and threats in a future guest article.
To register for your free digital launch copy of the quarterly Futurenautics journal, please visit www.futurenautics.com.