The international transportation of commercial goods and equipment is heavily dependent on shipping; over 80% of the journey is through water. However, the shipping industry faces countless disruptions every day, whether its severe weather, geopolitical troubles or industrial strikes. Recently, disruptions in the Red Sea rerouted 586 container vessels in first half of February 2024 alone. Meanwhile, container tonnage crossing the canal fell by 82%. Meanwhile, the bridge collapse catastrophe that occurred in Baltimore has seen the port – one of America’s largest – being closed as a result for over a month, costing the US economy an estimated $15 million a day.
To mitigate these challenges, the shipping industry should look towards using innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to reimagine the way that the shipping industry can predict and circumvent disruption, ensuring different parts of the supply chain run seamlessly, whether this is the task of navigating the ship, or managing activity at a port.
At the same time, as climate change soars, the shipping industry, akin to most sectors, is experiencing increasing pressure to become more sustainable. To ensure long-term success, efforts to become more sustainable need to go hand in hand with encouraging business growth. By implementing innovative technologies, shipping companies can improve their bottom line through increased efficiencies, while at the same time working to decarbonise our oceans.
Navigating unpredictability
Potential disruptions in the shipping journey can make predictability a challenge to achieve. However, companies can deploy generative AI technologies to minimise the need to play the guessing game. For example, a singular port only has so much capacity, and if too many ships arrive at once, waiting times may skyrocket, while the extra fuel used by stagnant ships creates a large carbon footprint. Here, shipping companies can use generative AI tools to analyse past arrival information and predict when ships should arrive at the port to minimise disruption.
Often, companies own a lot of data in silos, but lack the knowledge or resources to be able to analyse and make use of this data. For example, take the task of fuel management. Human employees still often do this manually, basing their decisions on past experience. The opportunity arises to combine the power of generative AI with large language models (LLMs) to document and therefore automate these processes, saving shipping crews time. With these new technologically powered processes in place, shipping companies can make use of the wealth of data they own to make informed decisions.
As another example, generative AI can be deployed with LLMs to identify factors that impact disruption, such as severe weather and geopolitical ongoings, and alert staff to take steps to mitigate this.
Preserving our oceans
As environmental damage to our oceans accelerates, subsequently so is regulatory pressure on the shipping industry to mitigate sustained damage. In fact, in December 2023, the United Nations General Assembly adopted two resolutions that highlighted the rising threats that our oceans are facing, a crucial step towards its goal to conserve at least 30% of marine and coastal areas by 2030.
For the shipping industry, the priority concern is how ships can avoid causing damage to the oceans and its biodiversity. Generative AI and LLM tools can be used to create an effective environmental impact monitoring system. For example, port congestion is a large contributor to local air pollution, but a tech-enabled system can forecast and therefore reduce congestion to decrease air pollution. Meanwhile, the risk of bringing invasive species to local ecosystems is a concern, but an AI-powered system can track vessels to provide advanced warning of invasive species risks.
The trust factor
Despite the buzz around AI technologies, these tools are still rapidly advancing, so it’s no surprise many in the shipping industry are reluctant to put their utmost trust in what a generative AI tool suggests over their own years of human experience.
However, these technologies would be used as part of a holistic decision-making process; a human will always need to validate the results, but these technologies can offer more reassurance that the most appropriate action is being taken on the shipping journey based on thousands of pieces of real-time data, all analysed at once.
This can offer workers in the industry the chance to upskill and use exciting modern technologies within their work, while helping reduce costly and time-consuming disruptions. Meanwhile, greater efficiency will help organisations meet their environmental goals while attracting customers and investors – all of whom are becoming increasingly sustainably minded.
Better together
However, human scepticism isn’t the only problem looming over the implementation of AI tools. There are many stakeholders throughout the shipping ecosystem, from the ship itself, to the delivery company, to the port.
To make the most of AI technologies, the shipping industry must work together to break down information silos and in turn improve the quality of operational insights. However, coordinating all the data involved is difficult, especially when many often lack the resources – whether personnel-wise or financially – to focus on innovating digitally.
Rather than seeing implementing AI as a huge project that needs everyone’s buy in, shipping companies should take it step by step. Even a small attempt at becoming more sustainable can reduce carbon emissions greatly.
Looking forward, making operations as efficient as possible while working to decarbonise our oceans is paramount as the world becomes more geopolitically, environmentally and financially unpredictable.