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Hacking into sustainability at Nor-Shipping

Astrup Fearnley, DNV and Microsoft are no strangers. Norwegian based Astrup Fearnley and DNV are global companies with long traditions and well-established values in the maritime industry. The Veracity by DNV cloud platform is built on Microsoft’s leading cloud computing service Azure. Last year DNV received the Sustainability changemaker partner of the year award from Microsoft Norway, based on cases developed over the platform.

Bonded by an ambition to help facilitate a more sustainable shipping industry, the maritime duo have spent the last few years investigating how DNV’s data sharing platform, Veracity , could be used as a facilitator for change. The result is the development and testing of the Emissions Prediction Calculator.

Common goals

The Emissions Prediction Calculator, utilising DNV’s data driven emissions models, target ship brokers, owners, and charterers to make more informed decisions of the environmental footprint of a future journey where otherwise little or no data is available.

“It demonstrates how the industry can collaborate to empower decarbonisation through digitalisation,” explains Dag Kilen, Head of Research, Fearnleys. “By working together, sharing and utilising validated quality data, different industry stakeholders – such as brokers – can make informed decisions and help drive understanding, standardisation and, ultimately, change. No one can do this alone. But together we unlock progress for the whole industry.”

Dag Kilen, Head of Research, Fearnleys.

Microsoft recognizes the same, as explained by Christoffer Lokrheim, Maritime Lead for Microsoft Norway: “When driving forward gains for sustainability, we are faced with questions like ‘what is the status today?’ ‘What and who are the largest polluters?’ and ‘how are they changing?’ The entirety of these projects is a “big data” problem in the truest sense. We see that Industries and Ecosystems need to come together and share the common goal of optimizing the entire value chains.”

Christoffer Lokrheim, Maritime Lead for Microsoft Norway.

And that’s where Nor-Shipping comes in.

Platform for progress

With tens of thousands of international industry stakeholders gathering physically, in one place, for the first time since the pandemic began, Nor-Shipping 2022 (4-7 April in Oslo and Lillestrøm) provides the perfect platform for collaboration.

As such, the three firms are inviting students and shipping firms to a ‘hackathon’. Kicking off on Monday evening (Nor-Shipping’s opening day) the initiative – which is both physical and virtual, to encourage maximum participation – runs through to Wednesday afternoon. The students will be challenged to use the calculator API to solve a real life broker challenge and present the most compelling advice to the jury, while companies will look at how they can integrate the calculator into their existing models.

The result of the respective challenges, and the winners, will be unveiled on Thursday 7 April at the Katapult Ocean Conference.

Smashing silos

Fearnleys’ Kilen says the initiative will build bridges between established companies and the next generation of industry talent, while also demonstrating the benefits of collaboration and how sharing and utilising data can unlock both business value and environmental gains.

Mikkel Skou, Managing Director, Veracity agrees.

Mikkel Skou, Managing Director, Veracity.

He notes: “This hackathon focuses on the need for industry collaboration; we share our emissions predication machine and we ask what is acceptable data quality for such calculators to be used proactively to reduce shipping emissions?”

 “The hackathon, sets an example of a new way of working. We hope this type of activity can open discussions to enable more collaborative innovation and help take industry digitalization to new heights.”

#hACTION time

The hackathon plays on the main theme of Nor-Shipping 2022, taking positive business #ACTION within the ocean space, and has been christened “#hACTION for sustainable shipping”. Delegates can find out more about the initiative at a special stand within Nor-Shipping’s 22,000 sq. m of exhibition halls in Lillestrøm.

For students, researchers or start-ups who want to participate, please see Nor-Shipping Hackathon 2022

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