ShippingLab – setting sail on a new large collaboration project

It is the Government’s stated ambition to maintain and expand Blue Denmark's position as a growth engine in the Danish economy. ShippingLab implements this ambition, having stakeholders across the maritime industry joining efforts on pre-competitive initiatives. 

In a new, large ShippingLab collaboration project starting on May 1, 2024, the partners work together on increasing energy efficiency, accelerating the green transition of the global maritime sector, and developing the position of Blue Denmark as frontrunner for decarbonization and energy-efficiency.

The project sets three key goals that will increase job and value creation compared to 2020

• Reduce CO2 emissions of the Danish fleet by 25% by 2030
• Increase the turnover by 30% by 2030
• Attract 40% more students to maritime MSc programmes

With the launch of SLGREEN at the ShippingLab platform, the Danish maritime community initiates ambitious maritime research, development, and innovation. Building on valuable experiences starting in 2015 with Blue INNOship and the ShippingLab platform initiated in 2019. The wide range of partners – from established, large corporations to new, emerging businesses, universities and maritime university colleges, GTS institutes, organizations, and public authorities etc. – ensures a valuable maritime collaboration on research, development, testing and validation of innovative solutions that supports the common goal of SLGREEN. Further, the presence of some of the largest ship owners within the different segments underlines and value derived from the activities from SLGREEN.

The technological objectives of SLGREEN meets the overarching objective and responds to the global challenge by developing up to TRL7 an array of digital technologies that contribute to the goals:

• Objective 1: Develop vessel performance prediction tools to improve navigation in waves
• Success Criterion: A digital twin for vessel performance in waves tested on commercial routes
• Objective 2: Develop biofouling prediction models for managing hull performance
• Success Criterion: A biofouling prediction model is integrated into the vessel performance system of partner ship owners
• Objective 3: Condition monitoring and wear prediction model for marine combustion engines
• Success Criterion: A digital twin for predicting wear is integrated into the engine performance monitoring system of partner engine-maker
• Objective 4: Develop an integrated system for digital pilotage enabling remote navigation
• Success Criterion: The digital pilotage system is validated through full-scale demonstrators
• Objective 5: Develop a system for improving the comfort and health of crew on board
• Success Criterion: A digital pilot demonstration and guidelines on mitigation technologies

Programme

17:00 – 17:20 General introduction to ShippingLab
by Magnus Gary, ShippingLab

Presentation of the overall activities at the ShippingLab platform and introduction to the new, large ShippingLab project ‘ShippingLab – Green transition of the Blue Denmark by focusing on digitalization, decarbonization and safety (SLGreen)’

17:20 – 17:40 Presentation of the activities within the work package on ‘Digital twin ship design for real-life conditions in waves’
by Henrik Mikkelsen, Aerotak 

In the last decade, ships have increasingly been optimized for a range of draughts and speeds in calm water to reflect the operational profile. However, it is fair to say that the state-of-the-art ship design philosophy in both the Danish and international contexts are mainly based on calm water conditions, while a margin of performance expectations is often added to empirically consider the added resistance due to wave effects. Consequently, ship hulls and propellers are not necessarily optimized for the actual operational profile and wave conditions that ships will operate in.

Within the project period the aim is to establish and demonstrate tools and procedures that can be used to support the design of the next generation of vessels, which to a higher degree are optimized for real-life conditions in waves, compared to current methodology focusing solely on calm water. The goal is to be able to optimize vessels that are more fuel-efficient than what can be achieved with the current methods to support the shipping industry in the process of meeting the future emission targets.

17:40 - 18:00 Bio Fouling and  Business case calculator
by Jakob Buus Petersen, Vessel Performance Solutions

Biofouling on ships causes huge losses of efficiency, for the entire world fleet it is fair to assume a loss of around 20% in efficiency, corresponding to excess CO2 emissions for the same operational pattern.
Development of biofouling prediction tools and fouling models to be implemented in state-of-the-art performance management software that are utilized by leading Danish and international ship owners.

If a proper biofouling model is developed, shipping companies can use it to look into the future, do pro-active actions ahead of time instead of constantly being behind using retrospective data entries. Further, charterers can use  AIS data and ship design data to predict the current state of a vessel.

The fouling model is expected to help shipping companies to design and execute improved hull and propeller maintenance strategies and perhaps more important, help charterers to charter in the more efficient vessels when there is a choice.

The business case calculator will enable shipping companies to make decisions on a more consistent basis, considering the learnings from analysis of the large database of VESPER as well as the developed fouling model.

18:00 – 18.30 Refreshments

18:30 – 18:50 Digital Twins for engine condition monitoring and wear prediction
by Niels Gorm Malý Rytter, University of Southern Denmark

In the offshore energy industry, major vendors of wind turbines like Siemens and Vestas have service contracts with their clients and carry out remote condition-based monitoring (CBM), diagnostics and predictive maintenance (PdM) for +10.000 wind turbines using real-time sensor data, weather data, digitalized maintenance, repair records and AI algorithms on component level. The maritime industry has, despite increasing investments in technologies as Internet of Things (IOT), Real-time Connectivity and Artificial Intelligence (AI), been surprisingly slow in realizing a similar set of digital service models on the vendor side and implementing practices for CBM and PdM among ship owners.

The objective of the task is to investigate if and how it is possible to develop CBM and PdM digital twin models for systems and critical components of marine combustion engines which eventually can be integrated into IT applications and embedded in daily onboard and remote work practices of DK shipping companies and partnering equipment vendor(s). The project contributes to the bring the DK maritime industry on the forefront on the area of digitalisation and sustainable ship operations.

18:50 – 19:10 Digital land-based Pilotage and remote navigation
by Dimitrios Papageorgiou, DTU Electro

To perform the remote pilotage of merchant vessels through harbours, pilots operating from shore control centres need trustworthy real-time information concerning the vessel and its surroundings to ensure a safe operation for the vessel itself and the other actors operating in the harbour. This should be achieved both for human operated vessels and future autonomous ships.

Among other things, the outcome of ‘Digital land-based Pilotage and remote navigation’ will be a technology maturation and upscaling setting could lead to a commercial solution adopted by piloting companies to provide new service for remote pilotage in commercial harbours.

19:10 – 19:30 Digital Models for Crew Comfort
by Marie Lützen, Lisa Loloma Froholdt and Benjamin Pjedsted Pedersen, University of Southern Denmark

Seasickness is not a new phenomenon – seafarers have always known about the problem, and luckily most can adapt to provocative motion over time. The time taken to adapt is individual, but the majority will ‘get their sea legs’ within 3 to 4 days. Seasickness has not been considered as a large problem, but as of late it has increased due to the dramatically growing off-shore wind industry, where technicians are needed for maintenance work. They are transported by smaller crew transfer vessels (CTV) from shore to the wind farm. The transportation time is short, and technicians do not have enough time to adapt to the motions. Today, the planning for seasick avoidance on board these vessels depend heavily on rule-of-thumb, where decisions made on whether to sail or not, are based on local experience and maybe a given sea wave threshold.

The goal of the work is to develop knowledge and technologies that can help ship operators or owners of crew transport vessels to deliver safe and comfortable transport of crew and passengers and to obtain environmentally friendly and cost-efficient operation.

The Task will address the problem of seasickness. A demo tool that can estimate and predict the probability of seasickness for a given weather forecast will be developed together with guidelines on mitigation methods and technologies.

19:30 – 19:45 Human-technology interaction, barriers and potentials in green transition of the blue denmark - an Anthropological analysis
by Perle Møhl, University of Southern Denmark

The work aims to analyse the relation between human sensory competencies and digital technologies developed in the SLGREEN project.

This human-technology interaction analysis seeks to contribute to: 1) improving the use of digital sensors, decision support tools, data analysis and remote operations, 2) reducing unnecessary installations, data, and costs, and 3) averting complications in decisions where human skills excel, thereby enhancing the foundation for automating processes more efficiently handled by digital technologies. The collaborative aspects of the project will also be integrated into the analysis.

The goal of the work is to enhance the feasibility and outcomes of the technical projects and the general SLGreen project by developing insights and knowledge about the social, cultural and professional values that guide the work, collaboration and progress of the projects, the interaction between humans and technologies, and, when possible, about the tasks and decision support that the technologies are intended to provide as well as how human agents operate and use their sensory capacities. These types of insights can ultimately enhance the potential for the technological projects and their solutions, to offer useful, environmentally friendly, and cost-efficient support to operations.

19:45 – 20:00 Legal outreach and dissemination
by Asli Arda, KU Law

The work aims to address legal challenges arising from technological advancements in shipping based on insights gathered from partners' technical experiences through periodic interviews. It seeks to bridge the gap between technology and law, ensuring legal frameworks keep up with advancements. The goal is to assess existing legal obstacles and potentially develop legal solutions. Accordingly, the scope is predominantly regulatory. However, available tools of the law will also evidently be considered in searching for legal tackling mechanisms of potential legal barriers. 

Legal progress often falls behind technological advancements and legal research rarely goes alongside an empirical one. Accordingly, a crucial expected result is to be able to provide some tangible solutions that are derived from empirical work that is run by other partners. The work performed will seek to come up with suggestions to ensure the development of law catches up with the technology developed and tested by other partners.

20:00 End of day

The event is in collaboration with Danish Society for Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.