Maritime Risk Review – 2022 Windward’s year in review

Just when the maritime ecosystem expected to rebound from the effects of the coronavirus, Russia invaded Ukraine and created a tsunami for the industry (and the world). Sanctions and a price cap impacted exports that help form the base of the world economy and deceptive shipping practices (DSPs) unsurprisingly began to evolve in an attempt to subvert these new restrictions.

Knowing which companies and vessels one is engaging with became increasingly important for preventing financial and reputational harm. Key stakeholders understood it was necessary to reevaluate their technology and redefine their processes to better mitigate against risks that changed, or risks that maritime organizations were unaware of.

As a trusted advisor to many in the maritime ecosystem, Windward’s mission is to bring visibility to the maritime domain and increase awareness, and 2022 was no exception.

During this past year we:

• Enhanced our predictive intelligence platform to include critical insights
• Added new risk indicators to optimize investigations and screening processes
• Enabled new ways of consuming our insights across all workflows and platforms

Here are some select highlights of new technologies and features that benefited Windward’s customers in 2022.

Risk models and behavioral analysis

Windward is able to identify new deceptive shipping practices before many regulators and other data providers, due to our advanced technology and models. With +15 unique artificial intelligence models and 2.2M daily activities, we identify trends as they are unfolding and automatically flag them for our customers and partners. While doing so we help streamline decision-making and facilitate global trade, by minimizing false positives.

+1,000 vessels cleared for business – we updated our risk evaluation with new domain and research-based insights to keep pace with the latest maritime domain developments and trends. With the new Maritime AI™-based insights, we were able to immediately clear vessels for business by:

Quick identification of IUU fishing- related vessels and any associated forced labor indications* – our new behavior-based model goes beyond the environmental implications of IUU fishing and enables quick identification of vessels engaged in IUU fishing, the involved supporting fleets, IUU fishing hot zones, and any entity directly or indirectly associated with forced labor.

Increased visibility into Russia-related DSPs – a new Russia regime risk model was added to the platform to help users stay on top of new sanctions and requirements. The added risk indicators provide users with the most accurate, AI-driven toolset to complete their required/reasonable due diligence for any Russian oil transaction, including indications for port calls, STS operations, and ownership structures.

Platform enhancements

Research and development is a huge priority at Windward and our maritime experts continuously enhanced Windward’s Maritime AI™ platform in 2022 to increase visibility, make strategic decision-making easier, and to offer a holistic, unified view of risk, without the need for external safety data resources. Some new features and benefits:

Complete maritime and non-maritime counterparty due-diligence in one platform – we partnered with LexisNexis Risk Solutions to expand Windward’s Counterparty Due Diligence solution. This tool allows users to complete their non-maritime due diligence from a single platform, accessing LexisNexis’s leading compliance tools and data.

Eliminated the need for external safety data resources – a new safety-dedicated section was added to the vessel profile with important details on port state control inspections, vessel deficiencies, accidents history, and reasons for vessel detentions. The holistic data and insights repository eliminates the need for external sources, such as MOU websites, IMO, and third-party data providers.

Best-in-industry global maritime coverage – we consolidated AIS providers, adding commercial, classification societies, and industry ownership sources. In 2022, Windward also established close data connections to all major Port State Control organizations worldwide, to include more accurate inspection deficiencies and detention data.

API Insights Lab

Today’s end users expect an intuitive, integrated, one-screen experience to help them optimize their decision-making process. To satisfy this demand, we introduced our Insights-as-a-Service offering to empower customers and partners to receive Windward’s Maritime AI™ insights via APIs, directly into their existing systems and applications.

Seamless API integration of Windward’s proprietary risk insights – with the new Insights catalog, users can easily customize and enrich any solution with implemented intelligence on areas of interest, vessel behavior, maritime and non-maritime companies, and shipment risk levels, and optimize workflows and decision-making processes with an added layer of AI-driven insights and automatic push notifications in real-time.

95% daily fuel consumption tracking accuracy – Windward launched the first AI-driven fuel consumption model in 2022. It provides a reliable, independent way to track fuel consumption with up to 95% accuracy on average per voyage. The model fuses multiple data sources and inputs, including speed, weather conditions, hull fouling, engines and fuel types, 10+ years of historical voyage data, and more, to accurately report the daily fuel consumption on any tanker in the world.

Exclusive access to Windward’s unique Modeled Vessel Movements ready for creating models – our unique Modeled Vessel Movements stream is commercially available for the first time ever. It delivers a verified, ready-to-use, hourly data set that covers all IMO vessels in the world fleet and dates back to 2015. Windward collects irregular AIS signals from multiple sources – terrestrial, satellite, and vessel, and applies its patented fusion algorithm and machine-learning models to clean the raw data, fuse positional and static information transmitted by the vessel, and enrich the with voyage-related information, activity status, and additional weather layer (including wave and swell heights, wind speed, speed of ocean currents, visibility, water temperature, salinity, and more).

Summary

2022 was definitely a year to remember for the maritime ecosystem.

Windward worked diligently to provide our customers with increased maritime domain awareness and ensure they had the necessary visibility to avoid reputational and financial harm and make strategic decisions.

We are excited to keep working on streamlining global trade, optimizing intelligent decision-making, and minimizing and mitigating risk in 2023. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and a global recession looming, organizations throughout the maritime ecosystem will be putting a premium on combating risk in an economically feasible way via artificial intelligence and automation.

Looking to mitigate risk in 2023?