MONALISA – a buzzword at the European Maritime Day
The European Maritime Day was celebrated in Bremen, Germany on May 18-20. Almost 2000 people met to listen to presentations, participate in workshops and discover new things in the exhibition.
MONALISA 2.0 had a large stand in the exhibition and co-organised one of the workshops. Interestingly enough, MONALISA was mentioned in at least three other sessions
London-based lawyer Michael Kingston referenced MONALISA in his presentation on future safety and security and invited us to meet Lloyds of London. He is pushing Arctic questions with Lloyds and Per Setterberg will meet him and others regarding Arctic Best practices and establishing relations with important insurance companies.
Another session “Knowledge based Cooperative Maritime Security for the Future” was focusing on the Coast Guard perspective. Voices from the audience urged the people developing these concepts to synchronise their thoughts with MONALISA.
Some of these voices were representatives from the European Harbour Masters Committee, the European Maritime Pilot Association and Confederation of European Shipmasters’ Associations urging others to coordinate with MONALISA.
The Director General of DG MARE, Lowri Evans, took some time discussing Sea Traffic Management and future developments thanks to Axel Wenblad.
Exhibition
The visitors to the MONALISA stand were keen listeners and very positive; ranging from the maritime authorities from Jordan, Israel and Palestine to whales.org and Greenpeace. Representatives from various parts of the Commission also visited. Some key players from the industry actively looked us up, for example Atlas & Signalis.
Lots of people at the MONALISA 2.0 stand.
The MONALISA 2.0 introduction video was occasionally shown in the EUSBSR stand.
Workshop
A quite condensed workshop was held where Sea Traffic Management (STM) was combined with similar views on shipping and logistics from DNV GL and ISL (Institute for Shipping and Logistics). Ulf Siwe defined STM for the audience and then Captain Burkhard Müller from AIDA Cruises put forward the most important benefits from his perspective. JIT arrival based on accurate port planning will help save fuel. AIDA has their own coordination centre in Rostock, with automatic alarms if cruise ships deviate from plan route. Captain Müller knows that this kind of function increases safety, and recommend all ships to join.
Captain Burkhard Müller of AIDA Cruises
Speakers from DNV GL and ABB pointed to the need to change the mind-set of all involved in order reap the benefits. Joost Sitskoorn of European Shippers Council talked about integrating the whole logistics chain and presented the CORE project, which aims at moving the information flow from point to point to a shared environment. This project involves 78 partners and has a kick-off in June. We believe this might be a key project to align with. They have had earlier projects in the area, Cassandra, and we should look into their results.
