Shipping’s data genie is out of the bottle

The pandemic has changed much and yet the maritime industry has so far at least escaped the kind of structural impacts affecting other sectors. This is in part due to shipping’s below-the-radar profile which only briefly rose to anywhere near to prominence earlier this year.

Its effect on the supply chain has highlighted how shipping works, for better and worse. The plight of crews stuck onboard, unable to get off the ship let along get home, or working in skeleton crews onboard fleets of laid up cruise ships was an uncomfortable reminder.

But while the rest of the world worked from home, ships kept moving connecting and communicating. The supply chain’s resilience is something of a modern miracle but it happened in part because the technology to support it was finally ready.

2020 was the year when operators realised they could command and control their ships from shore, connect crew and also monitor their health, have statutory bodies perform surveys and service or upgrade onboard IT systems over the same connections.

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