Systems analysis for deployment of internet of things (IoT) in the maritime industry

Abstract

Various industries are undergoing transformation given recently available pervasive sensors, low-cost and low-latency digital communication, and distributed control technologies. The objective of this paper is to support the introduction of Internet of things (IoT) technologies in the maritime industry. The maritime industry is analyzed as a system of systems to define performance criteria and functions to be modeled and analyzed through simulation. In this case, the simulation of a shipping system includes models of operation, cargo loading, fuel loading, and docking for maintenance. In the simulation, various kinds of IoT technologies are defined by several input parameters. By changing the parameters, the simulator evaluates the impact of those technologies quantitatively. As a case study, 11 IoT technologies are evaluated and compared. The result reveals several insights that weight of the ship is the most impactful for the profit, controlling damage of the ship’s hull by operation is the most important for safety, and improvement in efficiency at ports is the key to reducing delay time in operation. Moreover, this paper shows that the sensitivity analysis by changing the input parameters can support the decision making of how much investment will be effective in considering the technologies’ levels.