
The Standardised Vessel Dataset (SVD) for Noon Reports project was initiated following discussions amongst members of the Smart Maritime Council, a cross-industry membership group focused on technology harmonization, standardisation and interoperability that includes vessel operators, technology providers and other stakeholders.
A lack of standardisation in data collection increases the effort and cost required to access data analytics in shipping, with resources on both the buyer and service supplier side wasted on customisation processes required to allow non-standard data sets to be ingested into analytics applications.
These processes, which take place during most maritime software deployment projects, require work to be performed without value being created. This need for data customisation to access each new software system also restricts shipping companies' ability to easily move from one software provider to another and take advantage of new digital tools as they come available.
As the Smart Maritime Council attempted to identify potential areas to target for standardisation, the Noon Report was chosen as a source of relatively simple data points (i.e., text and numbers) that would be common in meaning, though not identical in format, across different shipping companies.
With almost all shipping companies preparing a Noon Report daily, in most cases manually, this provided an opportunity to choose ubiquitous data points with generally small identifiable variations in reporting.
The Standardised Vessel Dataset (SVD) for Noon Reports, as well as related collection templates and supporting information, are available to download from the Smart Maritime Network website: