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Although much of the hype behind the cryptocurrency has declined over the last year, the legitimacy of the blockchain technology that fuels the currency is beyond doubt. Blockchain is now in different levels of adoption on various verticals, as companies run pilot tests to see how it fits their niche.
One of these use cases would be trace-and-track of ships and planes, which has been a longstanding problem in the maritime and aviation sector, particularly regarding accidents and loss of goods . The World Shipping Council estimated that on average about 568 containers were lost at sea each year between 2008 and 2016, excluding catastrophic events. The number swells to 1,582 containers lost each year when catastrophic events are considered.
The cargo is not the only thing to lose forever, with a moving example that the MH370 crashed into the Indian Ocean in 2014. The debris hunt following the disaster cost the Malaysian government $ 70 million, but the elaborate exploration of a year-long backdrop had little to show for this, with the circumstances that led to the incident still inconclusive. The black box on the MH370, a device that stores critical flight information at the time of an accident, has never been found.
Efforts have been made to have terrestrial stations memorize information from planes, rather than store them on black boxes – but all in vain. The pilot associations spoke out against the idea, because storing data in the cloud or transmitting it could mean that data could be violated, unlike having it stored in a physical database on the flight that is relatively safer (to this regard). The backlash that ensued led to the idea of abandoning the idea altogether.
The situation in the maritime sector is not different. The International Maritime Organization requires all ships to have a Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) on board. The VDR is a tool that continuously records critical information from ship operations, which has a 12-hour window for recording, after which new incoming data is written to previously stored data. VDRs, just like black aircraft boxes, are difficult to recover in the event of a major disaster, making it difficult for monitoring organizations to learn what went wrong.
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BlocBox, a Singapore-based startup, seeks to solve this problem by using blockchains to collect and encrypt information that is stored locally (on airplanes and ships) – as in the case of black boxes and VDRs – and transmit them to an immutable platform. this makes it safe for storing and retrieving data.
The real-time data is encrypted and transmitted through the satellite infrastructure, with only the office responsible for operations that have access to the stored data. Because this process is powered by blockchain, data can be accessed instantly and at a negligible cost, making it easier for risk mitigation teams to quickly process disaster information and access an incident site.
Blockchain has made significant progress in the transport sector, especially in the maritime sector, as it remains stirred up in chaos, with hundreds of stakeholders fluctuating in its supply chain. The main container lines such as CMA CGM and COSCO Shipping joined together to form a consortium called the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) that would work to create an open platform based on blockchain shared accounting technology. Maersk worked with IBM to introduce TradeLens, a platform that uses blockchain to simplify the global maritime network.
Meanwhile, with almost 500 members from over 25 countries, Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) is at the forefront of open blockchain standards, trying to drive the adoption of ledger technology distributed in traditional transport operations.
Consortia are fundamental in this context, because without the collaboration the concept of blockchain makes no sense. The different verticals within the transport industry would need to work closely with stakeholders to make it transparent and track a reality, potentially saving the industry millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of work in redundant operations.
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