Develop interactive data visualisation to improve the efficiency, productivity and sustainability of Port of Singapore

Smart Port Hackathon 2014 is first maritime-themed hackathon organised by Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and Urban Prototyping (UP) Singapore community to develop innovative solutions to enhance productivity, efficiency and sustainability in the Port of Singapore.

The inaugural hackathon saw a total of 120 participants from 25 teams, producing 25 original maritime-related prototypes in 48 hours using never been released datasets with 32 million data points representing different sectors of the maritime industry, such as vessel movement and position data, ship registries, cargo information, berthing schedules, container trucking data, bunkering transactions, hydrographic maps, air quality, tidal and weather information.

The Brief

Singapore has one of the busiest port in the world, handling over 60,000 containers and 500 million tonnes of cargo every year and its maritime industry has contributed to approximately 7% per cent of the country’s GDP. As international competition intensifies, Singapore will need to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies to make sense of the port activities and enable greater efficiencies and productivity in sustainable way. Maritime Port Authority (MPA) supported by various maritime industry players such as PSA, Jurong Port and Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) organized Smart Port hackathon to explore new, innovative use of technology to address following key challenges:

  • Productivity
  • Efficiency
  • Sustainability

The proposed solution should enhance the productivity and drive improved operational efficiency of those who manage port operations by providing them with the right blend of knowledge, skills and technology-enabled tools. It also provides assistance in managing complex processes to identify and reduce risk areas and mitigate impacts on the rest of the ecosystem within a sustainability framework that recognises and minimises the impact on the environment.

Idea: Smart Port Dashboard

Visualise complex relationship of maritime data through interactive, multi-dimensional dashboard

During hackathon, the organizer has made available significant range and amount of datasets to enable the community to conceptualize innovative services and solutions to the maritime industry.

We noticed the difficulty learning to interpret and understand these large amount of data and develop an interactive dashboard of berthing times in relation to berths location, ship types, and weather.

This allows Port Operation Manager to easily visualize, analyze and identify critical factors as well as areas of improvement for berth and vessel operations.

Result

With guidance from Subject Matter Expert from MPA and PSA, we presented our idea to following group of judges:

  • Mr. Andrew Tan, Chief Executive, MPA (In attendance)
  • Mr. Toh Ah Cheong, Director Technology, MPA
  • Mr. Patrick Phoon, President, Singapore Shipping Association
  • Mr. Gian Yi-Hsen, CIO and Director, Industry Identification & Incubation, EDB
  • Mr. Abhijeet Kulkarni, Senior Director, SAP Custom Development, Asia-Pacific & Japan
  • Mr. Chua Kee Thiam, Head of IT, PSA
  • Mr. Saw Kok Wei, Chief Financial Officer, Jurong Port

Our interactive dashboard was awarded “Honourable mention” prize.

Presentation and Highlight Reel from UP Singapore.