Class NK enhances big data capabilities

The Data Centre, which was founded on 7 December 2015, is a wholly owned subsidiary that aims to support the utilisation of data gathered from ship operations. It will be headed by ClassNK executive vice president, Yasushi Nakamura.

ClassNK’s Ship Data Centre consists of a secured shipping operations database which will serve as an information hub to independently manage the utilisation of big data in the maritime industry.

In addition to hopefully optimising ship operations and improving condition-based monitoring of machinery, the Data Centre could also be used to help the industry overcome current emerging challenges.

For example, the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) regulation requires shipowners and operators to annually monitor, report and verify fuel consumption for vessels 5,000gt or over which call at EU ports. This will begin in January 2018.

The Data Centre plans to offer shipowners and operators a secure and neutral database in which to store and manage these vast amounts of fuel consumption data.

Trials of the Data Centre will commence on a container vessel in February 2016 in cooperation with a Japanese shipping company. Various information such as the data from the ship’s voyage data recorder and data logger will be gathered in the trials.

Full operations of the Data Centre are scheduled for April 2016.