Fintraffic, a governmental organisation that controls and manages traffic in Finland, has contracted the Finnish tech company to implement a new port call schedule system.
The Port Call Time Stamp and Estimation Service will be based on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) data analysis.
The forecasts will be influenced by many factors that will be analysed using global automatic identification system messages.
In addition to automatic classifications, such as where a ship is coming from and where it is going, a ship's estimated arrival time will be influenced by many variable factors, such as its speed and route, the weather, and the ice situation.
By utilising machine learning, the service will remember what has happened in the past and how various factors have affected a ship's arrival time. The AI will learn the deviations for a particular locality and adjust its calculations accordingly.
The new system will be put in place this autumn. Awake.AI will first technically customise the service to meet Fintraffic's needs. Afterwards, a test phase will follow, after which Finntraffic will mobilise the service for use at the country's ports through its Digitraffic API or the Port Activity app.
"The importance of time data for shipping has been taken into account in both national transport system plans and the government's decision-in-principle on the digitalisation of logistics. The port call schedule service will now enable us to implement this on a practical level," Olli Soininen, Programme Manager at Fintraffic's Vessel Traffic Services, said.
"In practice, the new port call schedule service will provide the necessary APIs [application programming interfaces] from which port operators can obtain time data for use in their own systems," Kimmo Kummala, Project Manager and Vice President of Engineering at Awake.AI, added.
Katariina Kalatie, Chief Advisor, Ship Technology and Marine Environment at Traficom, also underlined, "This is a great example of networked collaboration in which each party has supported the project at different stages. I hope this can be developed on a long-term basis, and that more operators will get involved. Better predictability is of concrete benefit to many people's everyday work, and I hope that up-to-date and reliable schedule forecasts will be available to everyone who needs them within the next couple of years. Perhaps we can also find other similar areas for development that can be improved with the aid of data."
"The service will first be introduced at Finnish ports, but can in practice be used anywhere. This offers global opportunities in a variety of sectors. Finland is a world leader in digital development, and activities such as the port call schedule service will ensure that Finland remains at the forefront of global digitalisation," Awake.AI said in a press release.
Photo: Canva