Information as a Service in the Maritime Environment

BMT is a global leader in maritime innovation, with extensive expertise in engineering, environmental consultancy, and cutting-edge technology. We are currently in the first phase of a teaming agreement with Ocius, reviewing their capabilities to explore the potential of autonomous maritime technology.

Our vision is to launch a fleet of 1000 autonomous vessels designed to deliver a comprehensive range of Information as a Service (IaaS) solutions. This fleet aims to provide critical data across several key domains:

• Maritime and Offshore Asset Data: Monitoring the location and status of offshore infrastructure, tracking vessels, and overseeing maintenance schedules.
• Weather Prediction and Oceanographic Data: Collecting sea surface temperature, salinity, currents, wave height, wind speed, and providing detailed ocean forecasts.
• Border Security Data: Enhancing coastal and offshore surveillance, tracking vessel movements with AIS data, and utilising radar and satellite imagery.
• Emergency Response/Search and Rescue (SAR) Data: Supporting SAR operations with real-time distress signal location, coordination data, and historical weather information.
• Environmental and Climate Data: Measuring sea level rise, coastal erosion, ocean acidification, and marine biodiversity indicators.
• Hydrographic and Bathymetric Data: Mapping the seafloor, identifying underwater hazards, and providing navigation routes.
• Socio-economic Data: Supporting sustainable management in fishing and aquaculture, assessing tourism impacts, and evaluating the economic impact of maritime industries.
• Regulatory and Compliance Data: Ensuring adherence to maritime safety and environmental regulations and managing compliance data for international maritime conventions.

Addressable Market and Typical Customers

Our target market spans multiple stakeholders across 150 countries, ensuring widespread adoption and utility of our services:

1. Government Departments: Navies and Coast Guards for surveillance, patrolling, and SAR operations. Environmental Protection Agencies for monitoring ocean health and compliance with environmental regulations. Meteorological and Oceanographic Institutes for collecting data to improve weather forecasting and climate models. Border Security and Customs Agencies for monitoring and securing maritime borders.
2. Major Offshore Projects: Oil and Gas Exploration and Production companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron require constant monitoring and maintenance of offshore platforms. Renewable Energy Projects such as offshore wind farms need regular environmental and structural monitoring. Mining Operations require extensive environmental impact assessments and monitoring.
3. Port Authorities: Major Global Ports like Rotterdam, Singapore, Shanghai, and Los Angeles handle immense volumes of cargo and require detailed navigational and operational data. Regional and Local Ports that support local economies and require tailored data services.
4. Industry and Commercial Stakeholders: Shipping Companies need real-time navigational data, weather forecasts, and route optimisation. Fishing and Aquaculture operations require data on fish stocks, water quality, and ocean conditions. Tourism and Recreation operators need information on marine conditions, environmental impacts, and safety.

Why This Matters

In discussing the future of maritime data collection, it's crucial to consider the potential cost benefits compared to the current approach, where individual organisations contract separately. There are several advantages we anticipate:

Economies of scale play a significant role. By centralising data collection, we can reduce redundancy and operational costs, providing a more efficient alternative to individual contracts. Additionally, a unified data stream ensures high-quality and consistent data across regions and applications, avoiding compatibility issues arising from disparate sources.

Another key benefit is reduced overheads. Using our autonomous fleet, organisations can eliminate the need for extensive logistical and operational infrastructure, thereby reducing capital and operational expenses. The fleet will utilise the latest in autonomous and sensor technology, ensuring state-of-the-art data collection methods that might be financially out of reach for individual organisations.

Our approach leverages multi-sensor capabilities and commercial high-bandwidth communications, enabling near real-time data transmission. This ensures timely and accurate information for decision-making processes. Moreover, our fully modular system allows customisation to meet the specific needs of different stakeholders, ensuring that all data requirements are comprehensively covered.

The Global Trends in Defence and Security

A significant trend in Defence and security involves combining government-owned assets, like ships and planes, with commercially available data. This hybrid approach offers several benefits:

Defence agencies can reduce operational costs by outsourcing routine or expansive data collection tasks to commercial providers, reserving their assets for high-priority missions. Combining assets extends surveillance capabilities, with commercial data filling gaps and covering remote areas continuously. Utilising both government and commercial assets provides redundancy, ensuring continuous data availability and mitigating risks associated with single-source dependency. This model allows Defence agencies to scale operations based on situational needs, maintaining control over critical missions while leveraging commercial flexibility.

Strategic Benefits and Future Potential

Considering this initiative's future potential, integrating commercial data services can help future-proof maritime operations, enabling quick adaptation to technological advancements and shifting operational needs. Organisations can focus on strategic decision-making and critical operations, leaving routine data collection and preliminary analysis to specialised commercial providers.

Engaging in the Journey

We see this project as a collaborative journey towards redefining maritime data services. By engaging with stakeholders, we aim to explore and refine the capabilities of our autonomous vessel fleet, ensuring it meets the maritime sector's diverse needs.

Setting up a new corporate entity will be crucial to this journey. This organisation will be designed to raise significant capital and incorporate a range of strategic partners to round out the needed capabilities. We're looking at a model that balances equity investment, debt financing, and government grants or subsidies to fund the initial development and deployment phases. Strategic partnerships will be key, involving technology partners to enhance our fleet’s capabilities, data analytics firms for advanced data processing, and maritime industry leaders for market access and customer insights. Collaboration with research institutions will also ensure we stay at the forefront of technological advancements and regulatory developments.

This new corporate entity will have a robust governance structure to ensure transparency and accountability, supported by a team of experts in maritime operations, autonomous technology, data science, and business development. The infrastructure will be scalable to effectively support the deployment and management of the autonomous fleet.

Conclusion

The envisioned autonomous vessel fleet by BMT and Ocius represents an innovative and cost-effective approach to maritime data services. It promises significant cost benefits over traditional methods, leveraging economies of scale, integrated data quality, reduced overheads, advanced technology, multi-sensor capabilities, high-bandwidth communications, and a fully modular system. Additionally, the global trend of combining Defence assets with commercial data optimises cost efficiency, coverage, and control.

By setting up a new corporate entity, we aim to create an organisation capable of raising significant capital and incorporating a range of strategic partners. This will ensure the successful realisation of our vision and the delivery of unparalleled maritime data services.

We invite you to join us in this transformative journey. By partnering with BMT and Ocius, you can be at the forefront of maritime innovation, helping shape maritime operations' future. Let’s explore the possibilities together and drive the future of maritime technology.

Connect with Us

We welcome discussions on how our autonomous vessel fleet can revolutionise maritime operations. Whether you are a government agency, industry leader, or potential investor, your insights and engagement are vital to the success of this initiative. Contact us to explore the opportunities and be part of this ground breaking endeavour.

BMT and Ocius to launch 1000 autonomous vessels