Wärtsilä launched “An Oceanic Awakening” / VIDEO

Last year, technology group Wärtsilä introduced its vision of a Smart Marine Ecosystem to reimagine the future of shipping. This year it launched An Oceanic Awakening to bring it to life.

Creating the future together
The shipping industry continues to be hampered by challenges such as reducing emissions, cutting costs and increasing efficiencies. These are compounded by various factors including sub-optimal utilisation of onboard equipment, high traffic congestion in ports and lack of real-time communication and collaboration between stakeholders. ‘We needed to do something about this.
We needed to shake and wake the industry up to the disruptive forces at hand that can enable the global transformation and creation of a smart marine ecosystem and a 100% renewable energy future’, said Andrew Calzetti, Director of Marketing, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä. Through the expanded adoption of digitalisation and new levels of connectivity, Wärtsilä has set out to lead the industry into a new era of super-high efficiency, greater safety, and enhanced environmental performance. A new Smart Marine Strategy was inaugurated in 2017.
‘As the Smart Marine Ecosystem becomes the industry’s preeminent operating model, sharing capacity will improve fill rates and reduce unit costs and big data analytics will optimise both operations and energy management. Smart vessels will enable automated and optimised processes and smart ports will deliver smoother and faster port operations.’ Said Andrew But achieving this requires cooperation from many different players. It implies integration, data-sharing, acceptance and standardisation. ‘An Oceanic Awakening’ is about bringing together all the players required to build this Ecosystem.

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An Oceanic Awakening
To bring the vision to market in an impactful way, Wärtsilä launched ‘An Oceanic Awakening’ at the SMM exhibition in Hamburg in September 2018. This initiative brings a maritime perspective to the UN’s plea for reducing emissions of GHGs to combat climate change. Shipping must play its part in reacting to the challenges being faced, and the stringency of the environmental regulations being put in place by the IMO, particularly in cutting CO2 emissions, reflect this need. ‘An Oceanic Awakening’ is not only about imagining the immediate impact one could make on mitigating climate change through minimizing ships’ fuel consumption and transitioning to cleaner, connected operations. It also emphasises the need for change by bringing together all the players required to make the goals achievable. Recognising that collaboration is needed on a broader, global scale, a new forum was set up. The SEA20 is an international forum for the world’s foremost Smart and Ecologically-Ambitious marine cities, dedicated to making this happen. The SEA20 helps bring politicians, industry experts, NGOs, private companies, academics, and interested citizens together to plot the course to a sustainable future. At this stage, the cities of Hamburg, Helsinki and Rotterdam have officially joined the network and the initiative aims to have 20 cities onboard by 2020.

Setting trends for the world
Wärtsilä’s efforts have been recognised by the marine industry with Roger Holm, President – Marine Solutions at Wärtsilä being named number one on Lloyd’s List Top 10 most influential people in shipping. Lloyd’s List stated that Wärtsilä “stands out for going above and beyond short-horizon maritime technology.” Adding that “Wärtsilä’s commitment to leadership in the smart marine ecosystem space has been hugely impressive.” “We took a strong stand and stated that Wärtsilä will use connectivity and digitalisation to lead the shipping industry’s transformation,” says Holm. “We shifted our attention beyond the ship, and started looking more actively at its interaction with the surrounding environment and other stakeholders.” For the time being Holm, Calzetti and Wärtsilä look set to focus on building momentum behind their An Oceanic Awakening initiative while continuously developing, improving and marketing a smart product portfolio that supports it.