Vessel data and sharing for the machine economy

En felles datainfrastruktur, 'Unified Hosting Service' (UHS), for innsamling, analyse og deling av data ombord skip har blitt opprettet av Telenor Maritime og tilgjengeliggjort for DNV. Videre ble MQTT valgt som teknologi for deling mellom mikrotjenester og applikasjoner ombord på skipet, og metoder for tilgangskontroll på data har blitt etablert av Telenor Maritime. DNV har utforsket hvilke 'Distributed Ledger Technologies' (DLT) som fyller kravene til prosjektet og som dekker behovene mtp. å sikre at data ikke kan manipuleres. Tidligfase lokal implementering ved bruk av IOTA og Ethereum ble først gjort, og blant flere tilgjengelige DLT løsninger skiller Ethereum 2.0 (ikke lansert på det tidspunktet) og VeChain seg ut mtp. bærekraftighet og smart contract egenskaper. VeChain ble valgt og demonstrator applikasjoner implementert og testet på UHS med data samlet av andre mikrotjenester på samme infrastruktur. Tilsammen 6 mikrotjenester som interagerer ombord (på edge/UHS) og på land (i skyen) utgjør tamperproofing demonstratoren. Data må tilgjengeliggjøres for en av mikrotjenestene ombord og etter batch hashing (e.g. hvert 10 minutt) vil brukere kunne benytte en verifiseringstjeneste ved senere behov. Prosjektet har videre vist at 'tamperproofing' metodologien har latt seg implementere og vil kunne fungere for kritiske data samlet inn i en datainfrastruktur som støtter mikrotjenester slik UHS gjør. Videre er det vist at en verifiseringstjeneste kan benyttes både ombord i samme datainfrastruktur, eller på land hos forkjellige sluttbrukere av data og verifiseringsjekker kan automatiseres ved dataanalyse.

We have acheived a demonstrated HW/SW infrastructure that show that microservices can be deployed to a vessel for data collection and analysis, and that a tamperproofing methodology consisting of a set of independent microservices can access collected data immediately after collection, create a hash and publish to blockchain. Further it has been shown that this can be used for verifying original data for a newly developed vessel technical index calculation to increase trust in the underlying data and by extension between the relevant stakeholders, e.g. ship owner and charterer. Market research has also identified emissions data as particularly suited for tamperproofing due to these data being 'monetized' when shipping enters into EU ETS in 2024. In the longer term, more data will be 'monetized', i.e. data driven services will be increasingly common, and hence increasing the need for high integrity and high levels of trust.

Today, each vendor or vessel owner collecting, storing and analysing data, needs to install and maintain the necessary HW and SW for this purpose, and each needs to arrange for access to vessel communications systems for ship-to-shore data transfer. Such solutions results in high complexity and low reliability and resource efficiency. This project will utilize Kubernetes technology as part of a unified hosting environment for managing onboard microservice applications utilising Docker containers and a tight integration with a global connectivity solution which can serve the maritime industry. Further, there is presently no way of verifying truthfulness of large amounts of data, as it may be manipulated voluntary or involuntary, by systems or by human interaction, by whomever has legal or illegal access to a particular system. Situations may arise where pressure, financial or otherwise, may compromise otherwise trustworthy stakeholders or individuals. Also, data integrity and quality may be affected by unintended technical tampering occurring during the multi-stage ship-to-shore data transfer. As the importance of data increases, the current situation cannot continue. There is a need to ensure and verify that data is not manipulated, fabricated or deleted. This project will develop a methodology which can utilize the containerised data infrastructure to ensure that data collected in various Docker containers are not tampered with, and allow stakeholders to verify that data has not been manipulated in any way. Combined, a containerized common data infrastructure for vessel microservices and the ability to verify the truthfulness of collected data, represents the substrate necessary for building a machine-to-machine economy in the maritime industry. This project will demonstrate that it is feasible to develop and integrate the different technologies required to enable the machine to machine economy in the maritime industry.