The Maritime Reporting Model (MRM), developed by BIMCO and partners, can reduce the administrative workload for ship masters by 80% in connection with port calls.
We have developed a solution that allows the master to only type in all the required information related to port clearance one time. The master of a ship should focus on managing the ship and navigating safely. He should not be using his valuable time repeating the same administrative paperwork over and over again,says Anastasios Papagiannopoulos, BIMCO President and CEO of dry bulk shipping company Common Progress.
The MRM was developed as part of the EU-funded EfficienSea2 program, which was led by the Danish Maritime Authority. The overall program has its closing conference in Copenhagen 5 April and 6 April.
The prototype solution aims at standardising communication between ships and shore. The key to the solution is making sure that each of the different types of information a ship needs to share are associated with a unique name – a tag – that software developers must use.
Using a global standard for tagging information – such as the ship’s name or the number of crew onboard – software systems can make sure that the information transmitted by the ship always ends up in the correct ‘box´ at the receiving end, no matter who the recipient is. In more technical terms, it is a harmonization of data models used by maritime stakeholders.
In tests the BIMCO MRM e-solution can reduce the administrative workload in connection with port calls by up to 80%.
Reduction of administrative burdens for the seafarers is one of my key focus areas in BIMCO, and I’m very pleased that we have delivered a successful step in this direction,says Papagiannopoulos.
The next challenge for the MRM project is to get the entire industry to use this standard. To achieve that goal, ship-owners and ports must require their software developers to use this new standard for data modelling – in particular, when identifying data elements.
We have proved that the MRM works and is suitable for being rolled out across the shipping and ports industries. I hope that we can work with IMO to establish a successful maritime single window environment with this model at the heart of it,says Aron F. Sørensen, BIMCO Head of Maritime Technology and Regulation.
The solution is available via the Maritime Connectivity Platform (MCP). BIMCO is pleased to see that several IMO member states have indicated significant support, and that the MRM will be on the agenda for the June 2018 IMO meeting.
Sørensen hopes that ship owners and port authorities will demand that their software developers use the solution, which in turn will push national bodies to implement the MRM – including the unique tags.
-ENDS-
Aron Frank Sørensen
BIMCO Head of Maritime Technology and Regulation
+45 2913 1768
Or write to pr@bimco.org
For more information about the EfficienSea2 project, please visit efficiensea2.org or contact Esben Pejstrup-Pedersen at the Danish Maritime Authority: epp@dma.dk
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