Lloyd’s Register announced that ‘MV COSCO Shipping Aries’ was delivered to COSCO today. MV COSCO Shipping Aries’ is the first container ship to receive LR’s Cyber-enabled ship (CES) descriptive note ‘Cyber AL3 SECURE PERFORM’ for its energy management system.
The ship complies with the revised version of LR’s Cyber-enabled ships ShipRight procedure, issued in December 2017. The descriptive note gives an Accessibility Level (AL) for autonomous/remote access for the system, this ranges from the information-only AL0 (no access) and AL1 (manual access) through AL2 (cyber access for remote or autonomous monitoring) up to the highest AL5 (autonomous monitoring and control, with no onboard permission required or override possible). LR defines AL3 is defined as ‘Cyber access for autonomous/remote monitoring and control (onboard permission is required and onboard override is possible).
Shi Yongxin, COSCO Shipping Container Line Co., Ltd, Safety & Technology Department, General Manager mentioned: “MV COSCO Shipping Aries is the first 20K TEU level ultra large container ship built in Chinese shipyard owned by COSCO Shipping Container Lines. She is not only one of the largest container ships in the world, but also a ship with high cyber functions.”
Cyber-enabled systems can be used in a variety of occasions, from simple remote monitoring with a crew onboard through to a fully autonomous vessel without a crew onboard.
Furthermore, cyber-enabled systems requires a risk-based approach to identify the hazards introduced by cyber-enablement and to mitigate the associated risks.
“Cyber-enabled systems are considered to be systems installed onboard ships that would conventionally be controlled by the ship’s crew but which, through recent advances in IT and Operational Technology (OT), now include the capability to be monitored, or monitored and controlled, either remotely or autonomously with or without a crew onboard the ship,” LR said.
The ship was built by Nantong COSCOS KHI Ship Engineering, with COSCO now hoping to apply LR’s CES descriptive notes to some of their other vessels, as well.
