The Internet of Ships Open Platform (IoS-OP), first launched in May 2018 by a consortium of 46 Japanese maritime organisations, has announced its global launch as the partners look to bring their work to a wider audience.
The announcement of the global launch was made by Ship Data Center (ShipDC), a ClassNK subsidiary established in 2015 to provide an open data platform that could be used as a basis for maritime information collection, sharing and analysis. ShipDC provides the operational platform for the IoS-OP, managing security and data access control.
“We have prepared a platform where everyone could make data-driven innovation under the agreed rules. Now, it is time to invite everyone to join the initiative to create innovative solutions in the maritime industry,” said Yasuhiro Ikeda, President of ShipDC.
To maintain adequate separation of different data types within the platform, ShipDC says that the IoS-OP will run both a cooperative domain and a competitive domain for hosted data.
In the cooperative domain, IoS-OP users will collect and store data at ShipDC which ShipDC will make accessible under common rules agreed by all stakeholders. In the competitive domain, IoS-OP users will utilise the data to power their own specific applications.
An exploratory group to prepare for the creation of the IoS-OP consortium was first established in 2017, which gathered approximately 50 industry stakeholders in Japan to discuss issues like data governance and potential business models.
A framework for this first incarnation of the IoS-OP was drafted in early 2018 as a result of these discussions, before the official launch and introduction of the member group a few months later.
