As sustainability push across the globe intensifies, environmental compliance in shipping operations is no longer an option but a necessity. And high-quality data is one of the answers.
Although the maritime industry has been a significant driver of international trade for hundreds of years, it has come under scrutiny in the last decade over its environmental impact. As shippers, shipping carriers, brokers, and other stakeholders in the industry seek to control emissions, it is time they master data management and turn to high-quality data as an effective tool or guide.
This article will explore how shipping operations can leverage quality data and data quality assessment framework to drive environmental compliance.
How Maritime Operations Use Quality Data To Drive Environmental Compliance
Rather than pumping money into sustainability initiatives with zero direction, shipping stakeholders can identify sustainability problems and help streamline solutions for them. All with the help of effective data governance and high-quality data.
Here is how to leverage high-quality data:
1. Emission Monitoring and Reporting
In 2022, the maritime and shipping industries accounted for about 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Together, the transportation sector contributed to more than 20% of Co2.
However, a typical international maritime organization will claim it does everything possible to reduce these emissions — especially sulfur oxides (SO) and Nitrogen oxides (NO). The truth is that although many of these organizations are actually working on it, they are using the wrong system for assessing data quality, leading to bad quality and misleading data. This is why, despite their claims, there has been little impact.
Getting it right would mean investing in the right tools for measuring data quality. Businesses must invest in tools that can properly monitor and report high-quality data on the state of emissions within the shipping process.
That is how they can take effective steps to reduce it.
2. Fuel Monitoring
Heavy fuel monitoring is one of the cheapest and most common shipping fuels. Especially for the larger ships. However, fuel can be dangerous to marine life and the environment in general.
This is why monitoring its usage is actually important. For such a fuel, too much usage doesn’t benefit any party in the shipping operation. Well, except the seller. The business burns more money, the environment is increasingly in danger, and the customers, demanding more sustainability, are unhappy about the situation.
High-quality data lets you identify the correct fuel usage for your shipping operations. It also helps you measure the impact of strategies employed to reduce fuel consumption.
3. Waste Management
Ocean dumping is a situation that can easily get out of control within maritime transport. However, rules and policies are in place to ensure the wrong materials do not go into the sea.
Enforcing these rules and policies gets complicated, making identifying defaulters difficult. More than that, though, it can be challenging for shipping operations to get it right because of the scope of the operations and sometimes incorrect data on their activities.
This is where data quality plays a significant role in waste management. High-quality data gives shipping operations accurate information on their waste management activities. In turn, this helps them make better decisions during the entire process.
4. Ballast Water Management
With high quality data in the ballast water management process, you can achieve a continuous monitoring and assessment system that gives valuable insights into the process' success.
This will ensure you adopt the right strategies to optimize it. This would result in proper treatment and prevent the spreading of deadly organisms that could damage the marine ecosystem. Successfully adopting the right strategies helps operators know that they are compliant and minimize ecological risk in their own way.
With quality data, shipping operations can show error-proof documentation and reporting that endears them to customers.
How Maritime Operations Can Ensure Data Quality
There is a universal principle to ensuring good data quality. However, the application may change depending on usage or operation.
Here is how to achieve that for maritime transport:
1. Collect Data
Standardize the data collection method across the shipping operation. This helps you create a system that ensures data collection is streamlined for consistency, efficiency, and accuracy.
2. Verify and Validate Data
Set up models and checklists in place to confirm that the collected data is accurate. This means ensuring due diligence is carried out. It will help prevent complications.
3. Secure Data
Data is susceptible to errors and sometimes changes. This is why it is important to secure it whenever to prevent international or unintentional manipulation of collected data.
The Role of Technology in Achieving Quality Data-Driven Sustainability
In the modern world, data is synonymous with technology. And for good reason.
This is why it is very important for shipping operations to leverage tech tools and applications if they want to ensure the right data values and quality. Here is how technology plays a role:
1. Advanced Data Analytics
By leveraging AI and machine learning tools, you can set up a system that speeds up the data collection process and then analyzes it to determine its quality. In the future, these technologies will be able to ensure data accuracy and use it to offer useful insights on optimizing the entire shipping operation to enhance sustainability.
2. Real-Time Monitoring
With technology-driven platforms like Terminal49, you can access real-time data monitoring on activities like emission and fuel monitoring. This speeds up the reaction time and helps prevent potential problems from becoming a big stink environmentally.
3. Transparency
It is achievable with tech applications that can store or share data. This way, you can promote collaboration and transparency between all parties in the freight shipping operation, including regulatory bodies and customers. Transparency is also vital for ensuring effective data quality management and customer satisfaction.
How Terminal49 Platform Helps Ensure Data Quality in Your Shipping Operations
Terminal49 is your control center for collecting, tracking, and analyzing data throughout your shipping operation. More than just sustainability, we enforce high-quality data that helps improve your decision-making abilities before, during, and after the shipping process.
The platform eliminates poor data quality by leveraging data quality management tools and standardizing data from hundreds of sources into one platform, targeting 100% completeness across milestones. For your sustainability efforts, this means you can effectively:
- Track and monitor emissions from shipping
- Track and monitor fuel usage
- Analyze waste management
- Analyze ballast water management
Frequently Asked Questions
Exploring some of the environmental compliance and shipping operations FAQs
Q1. What are the main environmental concerns associated with efficient maritime operations management?
There are two main concerns with respect to the environment where shipping is concerned. They include pollution from emissions (SOx and NOx, are good examples) and then wrong ballast water discharge.
Q2. How can data quality measures benefit shipping companies beyond environmental compliance?
With quality data, shipping operations can:
- Save on fuel usage and optimize freight routes, thereby reducing operational costs.
- Reduce the risk of fines and penalties for non-compliance.
- Streamline the shipping process for effectiveness.
Q3. What emerging data quality challenges are associated with ensuring high data quality for environmental compliance?
The common challenges include ensuring standardization of the data collection process, verifying data, and validating the process to reduce errors.
Q4. How will advanced technologies like machine learning and AI contribute to environmental sustainability in shipping?
- Advanced analytics can provide deeper insights for further emission reduction strategies and route optimizations.
- These technologies can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends that traditional methods might miss.
