The Digital@Sea International Conference was held from 30th to 31th January 2024 at IDA Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The theme for the conference was "Paving the way for a Global Maritime Digital Vision". The conference was attended by 129 participants from 22 countries.
With a variety of inspiring presentations, interactive sessions, group work, live demonstrations etc. the participants progressed on a common understanding of a global vision for digitalization of the maritime sector.
The main conclusions of the conference were:
- There is a need for a common global maritime digital vision to guide the digitalization efforts across nations and international organizations, including IMO, IALA, and IHO.
- Digitalization is not a goal in itself, but presents a significant potential for the maritime industry to improve safety and efficiency at sea, to alleviate administrative burdens as well as to improve the lives of seafarers.
- An important prerequisite will be ensuring cyber security.
- International cooperation is the key to unlock the potentials and to fulfil a global digital maritime vision. Currently, the maritime industry reap the benefits of more than 10 years of international coorporation and collective projects, based on the IMO E-Navigation concept, which has proven to be a good starting point towards the future efforts.
- IALA is an important organization in terms of developing the necessary standards while the IMO needs to ensure harmonization of the use of standards globally.
Based on the valuable outcome from the Digital@Sea International Conference 2024, the Digital@Sea partnership will bring suggestions forward at the IMO and IALA, to realize the common global digital maritime vision.
The Digital@Sea conferences planned for 2024 are as follows:
- Digital@Sea North America, to be held 8th to 9th May 2024 in Atlantic Beach, Florida, USA
- Digital@Sea Asia Pacific, to be held 10th to 11th September 2024 in Busan, the Republic of Korea.
More information on the Digital@Sea initiative, which is founded by Denmark, Canada, the United States, the Republic of Korea, RTCM and IALA as the coordinating body, can be found at http://digitalatsea.org.