As the shipping industry advances its investment in digital technologies, reaping the benefits of streamlined operations and superior business intelligence, it’s important to focus on the key role Marine Assurance plays in achieving corporate goals.

Marine Assurance underpins maritime safety, regulatory compliance and sustainability by defining the vetting and inspection regime that assesses the risks relating to a vessel’s operations and on compliance…. Therefore, Marine Assurance is a business-critical discipline, and should be considered the unsung hero of marine safety and environmental performance.

While the shipping industry continues a decades’ long improvement in the safety of its assets, the nature and magnitude of the risks it faces do not stand still. Today, digitalisation is revolutionising business processes, voyage planning, as well as the automation, remote monitoring and performance of machinery onboard ships.
The marine industry is now experiencing a shift in responsibilities as it adapts to new regulations and operating methods. As these interacting forces evolve, Marine Assurance systems must continue to progress in sophistication, not only to remain fit-for-purpose, but to constantly raise the bar on performance.

Enhancing the power of digitalisation
This is exactly what’s happening with OCIMF’s SIRE 2.0 tanker inspection regime. It will bring significant, in-depth and timely changes, built largely on advances in digitalisation, and as a result, OCIMF anticipates that the current average number of inspections per vessel per year (about 2.4) will drop due to the higher confidence it will bring.
SIRE 2.0 is an evolution of the original SIRE programme, launched in 1993, aimed at addressing facility, equipment and hardware standards. Next came the Tanker Management Self-assessment (TMSA), launched in 2004 to extend the focus to management systems. SIRE 2.0 now further extends the inspection process to cover the human factor, audit scope and rigour.
By asking more in-depth and insightful questions to encourage more transparency across these new areas, the aim is to reduce incident levels even further. In addition to increased data, photographic evidence will now be available, bringing a previously absent and undeniably visible element to the mix.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will start to become a necessity to enable this information to predict the likelihood of future incidents. However, AI will always require interpretation from experts that know maritime and all of its complexities and nuances.

The sanctions puzzle
The ongoing situation regarding sanctions on Russia is another evolving challenge for the industry. Approximately 1,600 sanctions against Russian entities have been introduced, and that number continues to grow. While the sanctions themselves are black and white, a traditional ‘traffic light system’ is not viable in the current scenario and could make decisions regarding when and how to react to specific sanctions more difficult.
In this climate, it is critical to empower ship owners, operators, charterers and energy companies by providing combined intelligence from multiple high-level data sources and detailed analyses to support their decision-making. And this is where Marine Assurance comes to the forefront, providing not just vetting but also compliance functions.
Automated systems can only do so much to help the maritime industry work through the sanctions. By taking data relating to vessel locations, voyage histories, vessel ownership and operation, as well as cargo and crew manifests, and combining it with human intelligence, MIS Marine is actively advising on the ever-changing scenarios. This includes safety risks around Ukrainian crew onboard vessels, and financial risks around payments for crew members where banking facilities may be restricted.

A common vision requires collaboration
MIS Marine has invested heavily in the development of advanced Marine Assurance solutions and has provided hands-on support to guide customers through change. This includes addressing the twin challenges of replacing outdated legacy systems with more technologically advanced solutions that unlock the power of marine data to support due diligence, whilst avoiding the risk of data overload.
MIS Marine is taking advantage of digitalisation to help shipping continuously improve safety, security, health and environmental performance. We believe that collaboration is key to meeting the challenges and achieving our industry’s common goals.
Source: http://hellenicshippingnews