Cruise & Ferry Review - Autumn/Winter 2021

8 5 An Inmarsat GX5 satellite orbits Earth reduce the burden on the crew. That has big knock-on benefits particularly around the safety of the vessels – if you can put more sensors around a vessel, they can monitor all kinds of things about how a vessel is operating, for example the vessel angle of list.” Inmarsat is seeing a growing interest for automated safety systems that allow vessels to gather data from a ‘black box’ system similar to the type used on aircraft. “We’re working with partners to ensure that whenever the system detects that a vessel is operating outside of its normal parameters, it begins to upload the voyage data recorder information to the cloud straight away,” says Shortall. “It will also generate alerts and this gives you the ability to get visibility early on of what might be a serious problem, often before the captain or crew have noticed it on the ship itself. That’s something we’ve been pioneering with Danelec and demonstrated as a proof of concept to the International Maritime Organization.” Inmarsat works in partnership with other organisations to help operators achieve their technology goals. To this end, the company has a Certified Application Providers (CAP) programme which brings together application providers, with problem- solving capabilities, both large and small. “We’ve been working to extend the CAP programme and to get more companies certified and able to have their solutions connected onboard operator vessels,” explains Shortall. ”Always-on connectivity is increasingly essential for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and systems integrators to deliver their best services to ferry operators.” To ensure that solutions can be cost- effectively put onboard the ships, Inmarsat has been rolling out leasing programmes, “which in effect overcome the operator challenge of scarce capital. They can lease the connectivity systems hardware instead