Maritimedata.ai is a digital broker that provides data and analytics solutions for the maritime ecosystem. We work as an intermediary between clients in the maritime industry and solution providers to help them find the best data-driven solutions to their business challenges.

The objective of the newsletter is to provide you with up-to-date information on the most recent advancements in space and furnish you with market insights derived from data analysis.

TL;DR

• How AI might fuel the rise of the micro-business👽 

• Oil market enters second half of 2023 balancing supply and demand uncertainties 🛢 

• Cautious dry bulk shipping market with a strong long-term outlook📈 

• Should we look to Space Based Tech 🛰 to address the gaps in maritime compliance solutions?

• New Product🚨 DataCutter: Cutting through the complexity of AIS Data

How AI might fuel the rise of the micro-business

A post by Rory Proud of Maritimedata.ai 

I recently presented at the International Maritime Statistics Forum (http://www.imsf.info/) about the recent developments in AI, in part because I needed a sexy angle to address the fact that we still can’t agree on a universal vessel classification system (topic for another day), but mostly because I think it’s going to have a profound impact on the composition of our industry and the role data and analytics plays.

As illustrated by these timelines, the developments in AI have accelerated at a previously unfathomable pace.

Garry would probably appreciate we mentioning that he lost in the rematch, having previously taken the first leg 4-2 in Philadelphia a year earlier.

Humans have since defeated the best GoComputers. Kellin Pelrine, an American player recently beat a top ranked AI system 14-1 in a 15 game head-to-head.

I’m not sure it justifies another Terminator film, but I’m sure the Connor’s would be proud.

These are just some of the highlights that I’ve picked out this year to demonstrate the speed at which developments are happening.

It feels like a breakthrough release is coming every week, one of which that caught our eye was Open AI’s Chat GPT plug in, code interpreter.

This powerful plugin provides ChatGPT with a working Python interpreter in a sandboxed, firewalled execution environment, enabling the AI to handle uploads and downloads, solve mathematical problems, perform data analysis, and convert files between formats.

It allows users to complete complex programming tasks by simply asking a question in regular language.

It’s $20 a month…

So why bring all this up in a Newsletter dedicated to covering developments in the Maritime Data space?

Now people have access to the computational power available via these products, some of the biggest barriers to starting a competitive business (tech and infrastructure) has to a degree, been removed.

We’ve already seen a massive increase in the number of technology businesses all trying to address some of the more daunting challenges that our industry faces such as environmental and regulatory compliance, and for the most part that was before we could set supercomputers recursive tasks to execute while we sleep for less than 2 cappuccinos and a croissant..

GIGO becomes an even more important concept when considering that a lot of these models are similar in design and given the same inputs, produce similar results.

Therefore proprietary datasets that benefit from a degree of scarcity could be putting 0s at the end of their price tags as the demand differentiation grows.

It’s not all upside for Suppliers though.

Compliance could become a huge issue. As the number of micro-businesses without credible trading histories increases, using Bots to inundate Data and Solution Providers with requests for information and quotations, the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff could increase significantly, let alone dealing with breaches in contractual terms from business that could disappear as quickly as they’ve set up…

Humans historically are terrible at thinking exponentially and I’m no doubt massively underestimating the impact of this technology on our industry and the world. But one thing is for sure and that’s that interesting times lie ahead.

Oil market enters second half of 2023 balancing supply and demand uncertainties

A post by Neil Atkinson, Independent Energy Analyst

The end of the first half of 2023 is in sight and as always in the oil market we have seen great volatility so far this year with plenty of surprises. There is no reason to think that the second half will be any calmer.

To mid-May in 2022, the price of Brent crude oil averaged about $100 a barrel, including a spike to $128/bbl in mid-March. The main reason for high prices was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fears that production and exports of oil from Russia would slump in response to self-sanctioning by trading companies and sanctions imposed by governments. Also of concern before the invasion was that the post-Covid economic rebound would be vigorous, and that oil demand growth would outstrip the supply response.

In fact, these fears have proved to be wrong. Partly because high prices caused demand growth estimates to be cut back and because Russia remains able to export oil subject to a G7-administered maximum price of $60/bbl. Indeed, some countries, notably India and China as shown in the chart, have substantially increased their purchases to take advantage of a price discount for Russian Urals crude versus Brent that at one time reached almost $40/bbl and remains today in the region of $20/bbl. Indeed, data from the International Energy Agency shows that so far in 2023 Russia’s exports of crude oil and products have averaged 8 million b/d which is higher than in 2022 which in turn was higher than in 2021. On the other hand, Russia’s revenues from exports have taken a hit from $18.7 billion per month in 2022 to an average of $13.6 billion in the first four months of 2023.

So far in 2023 the price of Brent crude oil has averaged about $80/bbl. As well as the resilience of Russian production and exports, a reason that prices fell back in late 2022 and into 2023 was that oil demand in China fell year-on-year for the first time since 1990, by 0.4 million barrels per day due to persistent and strict anti-Covid lockdowns. Now, free of restrictions China could see a rebound in 2023 of around 1 mb/d. A key factor behind this will be three years of pent-up travel demand, albeit mainly domestic, which could see jet fuel demand in China rise 40% year-on-year having collapsed in 2022.

For 2023 as a whole, on the assumption that China’s oil demand increases by about 1 mb/d, India and the Middle East each grow by about 0.2 mb/d, the OECD countries see growth of 0.4 mb/d, and with modest increases elsewhere, global oil demand will increase by 1.9 mb/d. Looking to see how the market will balance out this demand growth, based on current expectations leading producers Brazil, Canada, Guyana, Norway and the United States are expected to lead non-OPEC (excluding Russia) production growth of 1.7 mb/d. This implies for the year as a whole a market slightly in deficit.

There are, of course, huge uncertainties. On the demand side, the possibility of further interest rate increases in Europe and the United States raises the possibility of a recession and this could impact the strength of oil demand there and affect China which sells enormous volumes of goods to them. Indeed, China itself has problems with high levels of debt in the construction sector and lukewarm industrial demand for diesel, suggesting that the big recovery anticipated for this year could be more fragile than I think. The other uncertainty is on the supply side, and it is whether the OPEC+ countries will implement the more than 1 mb/d of production cuts they have announced.

For 2023 as a whole, on the assumption that the supply/demand balance as shown in the chart does turn out to be accurate, in response to the significant deficits in the second half of the year I expect Brent crude oil prices in that period to average close to $90/bbl. However, I believe that the risks for prices are all to the downside, and a combination of weaker demand growth and higher OPEC+ oil production than promised could see prices remain in the current range of between $75-$80/bbl.

Whatever the reality turns out to be, there will be many surprises on the way and the movement of oil prices is unlikely to be smooth.

Cautious dry bulk shipping market with a strong long-term outlook

A post by Christopher Palsson of maritime-insight.com

The IMF’s April 2023 World Economic Outlook presents their GDP growth presents for most countries in the world for the next five years. Baseline is that global growth will fall from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.8% in 2023 and regain slightly to 3.0% in 2024. The advanced economies will fare worst in 2023 with a fall from 2.7% in 2022 to a meagre 0.3% in 2023, with the Euro area and the UK having the lowest growth. Global inflation in the baseline is forecast to fall from 8.7% percent in 2022 to 7.0% in 2023, mostly due to lower commodity prices. The IMF underscores that if the financial sector gets more stressed, global growth may decline even further in 2023, to 2.5%, with advanced economies coming in at below 1.0%.

Positive for the baseline forecast is that China seemingly has rebounded strongly when it opened its economy after the latest Covid lockdown. Global supply-chain disruptions are almost gone, and the global energy and food markets have sorted themselves out after the initial severe problems that arose from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The massive and synchronous tightening of monetary policy by most central banks should according to the IMF be effective, with inflation moving back towards its targets. Many of the emerging markets and developing economies are already powering ahead. The most negative factor of growth right now looks to be inflation.

The GDP forecast indicates that the global growth could trend wise be slowing down slightly due to lower growth in China, since China’s share of global GDP is significant.

Global coal trades rose 20% in 1Q 23, with exports increasing from Indonesia and Australia. The gains continued in April. Thermal coal dominated the trades, with Europe, China and India driving imports. Banchero Costa stated that seaborne coal imports into mainland China were up 100% in January to March to 80M tonnes versus the same period last year, while volumes into India increased by 15% to 48M tonnes.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine Europe has grown to be the fifth-largest importer of coal behind China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Iron ore rose too in 1Q 23 but by a more modest 4% as demand increased from infrastructure and property construction in China. Australia and Brazil were the exporting countries that increased output the most. Chinese steel exports increased in 1Q 23, but steel production is predicted to remain flat in 2023 due to stricter environmental requirements to reduce pollution in some of the major Chinese steel production hubs.

Global grain trade was down 10% in 1Q 23 versus 1Q 22 due to the war in Ukraine and bad weather in Brazil. However, Brazil expects to set a record grain harvest in 2023 and that should give a better 2Q 23. China is the largest importer and thus will tonne-mile demand be boosted.

China’s importance for the dry bulk market is clear, especially for large ships. China imports ¾ of all iron ore traded internationally and is also the largest shipbuilder of dry bulkers. Forty-five percent of the ship capacity delivered since 2000 was from China. In the recent five years that figure has been 60%. Chinese owners also own and operate most ships ahead of Greek and Japanese operators.

Fluctuating commodity prices impact the demand for dry bulk shipping services quite seriously. Steel demand is particularly sensitive and the knock-on effect on shipping hits three important services; the transports of iron ore, coal and steel.

The relatively low dry bulk carrier fleet age gives a continued modest dwt removal forecast for 2023-2027. In dwt the total will be 44M dwt, plus 10%, whereof 14M dwt in 2027 alone. Given the many old smaller ships in the fleet the increase will be higher in numbers. Looking further ahead, all the ships delivered in 2009 and onwards will be on schedule for removals and thus the total removals will increase dramatically towards the end of this decade. This will impact the ordering of new ships.

In 2018-2022 the dry bulker fleet grew by 3.3% yearly measured in dwt capacity. The forecast for fleet growth in 2023-2027 stands at 3.2% yearly. The fastest growing segment will be the 60’-100’dwt segment (largely Ultramax, Panamax & Kamsarmax) with a yearly growth of 4.7% in average.

For the 2023-2027 period the forecast is reasonable cautious due the numerous uncertainties. In the longer term there are many large countries in the world that need to invest in their infrastructure and that will propel the demand for dry bulk carriers, which paves the way for an optimistic outlook.

Extracts from the May issue of mi Shipbuilding and Fleet Forecast.

Should we look to Space Based Technologies to address the gaps in maritime compliance solutions?

A post by Vivek Mital of Vegamx.net 

Evaluating sanctions risks and developing appropriate strategies is foundationally connected with possessing real time maritime intelligence, which is critically dependent on space based surveillance and AI applications. Maritime surveillance (MS) is crucial for search and rescue operations, fishery monitoring, pollution control, law enforcement, migration monitoring, and national security policies. Commercial Industry, for the most part, relies on the automatic identification system (AIS) and ground-based maritime radars, which have deficiencies in providing reliable and seamless coverage of the entire maritime space.

Therefore, there is the need for supplementary sensors and technologies to overcome the limitations. The development of MS systems combines multiple sensors, terrestrial and space-based, with other sources of information requiring dedicated algorithms for the processing of satellite images, detection and classification of ships. In this context, revolution in the newspace industry has been timely and enabled a range of options. Constellations of space based sensors in multiple orbits are available for collecting images of very large and remote areas of the globe with relatively short latency, thereby enabling persistent monitoring of the maritime domain and ship traffic on a global scale. For example, satellite AIS data can be supplemented with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), multi-spectral (MSP) and hyper-spectral (HSP) optical sensors, Radio frequency (RF), global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R). This would provide low latency, high spatial and temporal resolution data, additional viewing angles, frequency, acquisition modes, polarization, providing persistence, all weather, 24 X 7 surveillance, and enabling maritime domain awareness. As a result of the space-based sensor technologies, advanced data processing paradigms, such as big data analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data fusion techniques are being put to good effect to process and organize very large amounts of heterogeneous data sets and attain unprecedented performance.

In addition to the space sensing grid, there are also powerful coastal radar systems in active development, such as Maerospace PASE® HFSWR (High frequency Surface Wave Radar) which can monitor a country’s full Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ). Designed for round-the-clock 24-hour autonomous or remote operations, the system can simultaneously track multiple vessel types and sizes across various ranges and then identify and track while their threat level is continuously assessed. The radar system can be further adapted to combining data sources from space and airborne platforms in a multi-layered C4ISR approach, thus forming a vital component of a pervasive maritime domain monitoring solution.

The most effective surveillance solutions utilize a “layered sensing approach” with multiple sources of maritime domain data combined into an integrated display system. “A good system supports strategic planning and the use of available resources,” said Krystian Chmielewski of Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace in the Republic.pl, “to integrate data from a wide variety of sources, such as radar, visible and infrared cameras, satellites and undersea sensors.” (Oct 12, 2022). Suspicious activity can be quickly estimated by comparison of multiple maritime domain awareness data sources. By layering data sources in a decision support system, the clutter of ships, for example, can be reduced to “vessels of interest” worthy of investigation.

With additional real-time analytics, even more insights can be extracted, for example, suspicious behavior that can be detected includes highlighting vessels who have “gone dark” by turning off their AIS transponder and “doppelgangers” (ships that transmit the same MMSI - Maritime Mobile Service Identities, as other vessels within their AIS signals). Doppelgangers are a key threat in the EEZ because a ship can be deliberately hidden from satellite AIS, even if they are transmitting their collision avoidance AIS normally.

It is worth emphasizing that much of this work is being pioneered in academia and government research labs with operational deployment and testing by entities such as the US Navy, US Space Force, NATO, Coast guard etc. The transfer of this knowledge and technology to the banks and financial services, shipping and energy companies, to cope with the stringent sanction requirements, is long overdue.

Integrated sensing utilizing data from platforms in Air, Space, Surface and other unstructured data sources will lead to a massively improved Maritime Surveillance picture and enable various stakeholders to perform due diligence, combat deceptive shipping practices and implement sanctions programs in a structured and timely manner.

DataCutter: Cutting through the complexity of AIS Data

We’re particularly excited to work with the team behind DataCutter as the solution aims to lower the barriers to entry for working with AIS and in future, other big maritime data.

Subscribers to Automatic Identification System (AIS) data face the daunting task of managing high-volume data sets, frequent updates, and common errors. The challenge lies in transforming this raw data into structured, actionable insights that can effectively guide strategic decision-making by describing vessel movements at both micro and macro levels.

Developing an architecture capable of handling this complexity is a significant undertaking, requiring not just substantial financial investment but also an advanced technical approach. These systems must be capable of handling enormous data volumes, identifying and rectifying errors, providing real-time updates, and delivering processed data in an accessible and understandable format.

DataCutter, the brainchild of Stuart Reed, founder and former operator of cFlow (a successful commercial AIS service acquired by S&P Global Platts in 2012), steps in to address these challenges. Reed has utilized his deep understanding of clients' questions and needs to design DataCutter as a customizable solution that delivers quick and accurate answers.

As a cloud-based service, DataCutter excels in transforming raw AIS vessel movement data into refined, actionable insights. Its data enrichment capabilities supplement AIS data with crucial metrics such as distance traveled, average and maximum speeds, providing a detailed foundation for comprehensive vessel performance analysis and anomaly detection.

With its secure cloud-based architecture, DataCutter offers robust and scalable data handling. It can efficiently process hundreds of millions of vessel positions, ensuring reliable data storage and ease of access.

For both existing AIS data consumers aiming to boost their interpretation capabilities and new users seeking to quickly gain a robust understanding of vessel movements, DataCutter proves a valuable tool. Moreover, it aids users in evaluating the quality of other AIS data offerings in the market.

To experience the operational value and flexibility that DataCutter offers in AIS data interpretation, interested parties are invited to register their interest and join the early adopters.

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Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

Rory Proud

Co-Founder

[email protected]