DNV GL sets out ambitions on safety and emissions

The twin celebration – of DNV’s 150^th anniversary and the merged entity’s first – attended by some 650 guests. Sharing the spotlight at the welcome dinner on Tuesday was the chairman of local shipowner Hapag-Lloyd, Michael Behrendt (pictured left), whose retirement ceremony took place the following day. Also city mayor Olaf Scholz (centre), who confirmed the credentials of the city – headquarters of DNV GL Maritime - as a go-ahead maritime hub by announcing its plans to establish LNG bunkering facilities in the port.

DNV GL president and ceo Henrik Madsen (right) announced that the group had decided to mark its double anniversary by taking a broad look at how to achieve “safe and sustainable shipping” going forward, to which end it has set three “ambitious” targets for 2050:

• a reduction of fatalities at sea by 90%

• a reduction of shipping emissions by 60%

• keeping owners’ carriage of freight costs the same or lower.

To achieve these goals DNV GL has been working on research studies in a number of core areas, as was explained at a special Innovation Day of seminars held on Wednesday. Maritime topics included Safe Operations, Advanced Ship Design, Connected Ship, Future Materials, Efficient Shipping and Low Carbon Energy.

On the question of safety DNV GL Maritime ceo Tor Svensen pointed out that it was a “sad fact” that shipping fatalities were 10 times the level of the best land-based industries, totaling about 800-900 deaths a year in maritime accidents and the roughly the same number from occupational hazards such as slips and falls. This number had not changed much in the last 10 years, he said, having dipped during the 1990s because of improvements in areas such as bulker safety, and if anything was beginning to rise again.

Much audience interest in technical seminars was shown towards a new DNV GL design software tool called COSSMOS (Complex Ship System Optimisation and Simulation) that it has been working on since 2009 to help clients improve fuel efficiency and is to be officially unveiled in the autumn.

DNV GL’s Piraeus-based manager for Strategic Research and Innovation in the East Med, Black Sea and Caspian region, Nikolaos Kakalis, described COSSMOS to Seatrade Global as the first solution that would allow users to “model, simulate and optimize integrated ship machinery systems.”

In a podium discussion that closed Innovation Day, DNV GL Maritime director of technology and R&D, Dr Pierre Sames, said he believed the onset of “Big Data” would “trigger a major change for our industry,” involving more onboard sensors, higher bandwidth and greater data storage capabilities. “I believe this decade will see a step change,” he said. “Ships will be connected to the internet likes factories, offices and houses are today.”

Greater connectivity will further improve the opportunities for fuel efficiency, which Sames had previously described as “top of the agenda for many of our clients.’ DNV GL already offers tools such as its Navigator suite of software programmes to help with smarter document handling, ship reporting and performance, he pointed out.

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