A new digital product called “Blackbeard” has just been released for speeding up shipowners’ complicated and critical task of assessing risk before signing vessel charters in dangerous areas.
After 13 months of development, Norway’s Bergen Risk Solutions went live with Blackbeard at the end of last week and gave TradeWinds an early look at its new analytical tool, which grants direct access to the company’s own large database on global vessel attacks.
Bergen Risk Solutions chief executive Arild Nodland says the product is so new that the exact marketing drive and level of the subscription fee are only being approved by the board this week.
Offshore vessel providers, drillers and oil-service providers generally follow their oil-company clients out of necessity, which often means entering high-risk areas. Bergen Risk already counts various offshore players among its clients, including the likes of CGG, Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), DOF, Solstad Offshore and Island Offshore.
Nodland says the idea for Blackbeard came from providing these clients with bespoke risk-assessment reports, which have been time-consuming to make. These are essential for owners to determine how to cope with potential threats or what day rates are acceptable given the proven levels of risk — long before they even take part in a vessel tender.
“With Blackbeard, we originally intended to rationalise our own process internally but we think it is such a success that we want to share it with our clients,” said Nodland.
Blackbeard is a sister product to Bergen Risk’s piracy-information map overlay that was developed for on-the-bridge use with partner Navtor, which is a solution provider for electronic navigational charts (ENCs).
The new tool can be used on the bridge but the main idea is for owners onshore to be able to visualise risk by generating detailed map overlays to ENCs that show instances of attack, details of attack, types of attack or attempted attacks, types of vessel and the names of vessel and so on.
Nodland says live piracy maps are in the market but believes Blackbeard is the first tool of its kind to offer directly searchable overlays in any given time frame, across all vessel types and countries.
Blackbeard would appear to allow owners to leapfrog Nodland’s services to a large degree. However, he says that although it will allow an owner to quantify risk for a region within seconds, his analysts are still needed to qualify that risk and offer mitigation strategies.
Blackbeard includes not only offshore but the full range of commercial ships. The product is aimed at owners, marine insurers, lawyers, flag-state administrators, government agencies, industry associations and private maritime security companies (PMSCs).
