Improving the Safety of Vessel Operators with Intelligent Decision Support
Two serious incidents at sea led to a conversation about safety on high-speed boats and methods available to mitigate and prevent further accidents. Hefring Marine came up with a solution that has evolved.
Written by Karl Birgir Björnsson, CEO of Hefring ehf.
Iceland is a country of exquisite natural wonders and beauty. The world realized this only less than ten or so years ago and the country has experienced a high and increasing influx of tourists ever since, with 2020 being an exception.
Tourists seeking nature-based thrills created a significant demand for whale watching and puffin tours, often best experienced on small, high-speed RIB boats.
Serious Incidents
In 2016 and 2017, two particularly serious incidents occurred that involved two RIB boats and three passengers with fractured vertebras.
The Icelandic Transportation Safety Board concluded that, “the accidents that occurred on board the two RIB boats in question were caused by the boats being driven too fast for the conditions they were operating in”.
These accidents led to a conversation about safety on high-speed boats and methods available to mitigate and prevent further accidents.
Intelligent Decision Support Solution
Hefring Marine is an Icelandic company, founded in late 2018. The company’s founders happened to be engaged in impact monitoring studies on high-speed boats at around the same time as the RIB-boat accidents occurred.
They realized that visualizing and displaying those impacts on board in real time might be a useful solution to help the operator make more informed decisions.
What started as a simple data visualization tool for high-speed boats has now become an intelligent decision support solution for commercial and recreational vessels alike.
The Hefring Marine solution is a digital AI co-pilot that helps operators and fleet managers improve safety, comfort and efficiency. The system monitors and analyzes a vessel's speed, motions and operating conditions and provides intelligent on-board decision support, guiding operators to optimize vessel speed and operation.
On shore, a fleet manager has access to a platform for real-time tracking, trip statistics and automatically generated trip reports.
Hefring has worked with operators and boat builders alike to help improve working conditions for crew and comfort for passengers by reducing the risks of accidents and injury, avoid damage to equipment and sensitive cargo, train and guide new and inexperienced operators, and gather data for insurance or claims purposes.
Monitoring Behavior for Improved Situation Awareness
The first Hefring Marine system was launched in early 2020. During the development of the system in 2019, the team conducted extensive research into vessel motion responses to wave impacts.
One research involved studying differences in behavior based on the operator being aware of monitoring in certain trips and unaware in others. The difference was striking. With all else being mostly equal, when the operator was aware of the monitoring device, trips were on average slower and safer and peak g-force impacts were reduced by 50 - 60% compared to trips where the operator was unaware of the monitoring device.
Another study found there to be a significant difference in severity of recorded impacts based on sensor location. Sensors placed by the front-most seat showed impacts that were six to nine times greater than those placed by the operator’s seat.
The accidents on the Icelandic RIB-boats were likely caused by a combination of the factors studied by the Hefring Marine team, being excessive speeding combined with a disconnect between impact experiences at the stern and bow.
Facing Challenging Conditions with Intelligent Solutions
Hefring Marine has ambitions to be a leader in intelligent data processing and interpretation solutions for safety and efficiency in the maritime industry.
The company continues to develop and expand the capabilities of its digital AI co-pilot solution, focusing on making vessels more intelligent with dynamic and intuitive decision support.
The Icelandic Coast Guard has been using Hefring Marine in the MOB tenders to the patrol ship, Týr. The system has proven very useful in particular for missions where we have had to face tough sea conditions, which happens regularly around the Icelandic coast. It helps our operators improve safety by evaluating how fast they should go based on prevailing conditions and has also been helpful as a tool to train new operators. It further allows us to compare operators to determine who performs best when it comes to handling of crew and sensitive equipment, Einar Þór Hansen, Ship Supervisor, Icelandic Coast Guard
Why GCE Ocean Technology
Hefring ehf. became a member of the cluster in April 2020. We wanted to become part of GCE Ocean Technology to expand our international network and to gain and share knowledge.
The cluster is an important stepping-stone for us in building awareness for the Hefring Marine solution and to engage in technical and operational partnerships within the industry.
Hefring Marine is an Icelandic company, founded in late 2018.
The company’s founders happened to be engaged in impact monitoring studies on high-speed boats at around the same time as two RIB-boat accidents occurred.
They realized that visualizing and displaying those impacts on board in real time might be a useful solution to help the operator make more informed decisions.
What started as a simple data visualization tool for high-speed boats has now become an intelligent decision support solution for commercial and recreational vessels alike.
Hefring Marine became a member of GCE Ocean Technology in April 2020.