ABS, a leading provider of classification and technical services to the global marine and offshore industries, led the launch of
the tri-annual PRADS 2016 symposium with a challenge by ABS Chief Technology Officer Howard Fireman to alter conventional thinking. Delivering the primary keynote address to leading naval architects, marine engineers and academic visionaries, Fireman embarked on an evolutionary look across the maritime industry to provide a glimpse into the future of classification as it becomes wider and deeper in scope while maintaining its safety focus.
“As ship and asset structures have expanded and evolved in scale, efficiency and sustainability, so have the technologies developed and incorporated into them to make them safer and more cost-effective in operations and production,” says Fireman. “Our challenge today is imagining and applying disruptive technologies that prepare us for a cyber-based and data-driven tomorrow as evidenced by the industry’s evolution from twenty years ago to where it is headed twenty years from now.”
Discussing future projections surrounding the ways in which sensors and other new monitoring technologies incorporate voluminous amounts of data securely, Fireman encouraged PRADS 2016 attendees to embrace the future of classification as risk-informed, continuous and condition-based, and cyber-dependent and data-driven.
“We all must be technology-driven and continuously focused on the next generation of safety systems that extend well beyond the hardware,” Fireman said.