Using data and AI to improve situation awareness for operational performance

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Workshop in New Hotel, Athens, Nov 19 2026

 

There is potential for maritime operations be more effective if operational staff had the best possible situation awareness, such as from having all critical information immediately available, rather than having to go through multiple e-mails and other systems to find it.

 

Such a system could be delivered with the help of AI, process models and data management. Getting there may be more a long term pathway than a single system you can buy. And it is probably something you need to develop from the systems you currently have.

 

In this workshop, led by Karl Jeffery of People Tech Maritime and Dimitris Lyras of Lyras Shipping / Ulysses Systems, we'll look at what situation awareness means for people in operational roles, the various ways that AI can help get there, and what other tools and data management may be involved.

 

The workshop is for people in IT / digital technology roles in shipping companies interested in exploring better ways to achieve this sort of digital transformation, and people from digital technology companies interested in learning about better ways to get there. If this is you, please register now.

 

By attending, you should be able to learn ways to help improve operational effectiveness of your company, and its overall competitiveness, safety, security and environmental performance.

 

 

 

We'll look at:

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- understanding how situation awareness can drive decision making in specific maritime contexts, and what it is - including helping understand how a situation works, as well as what is going on

- why conventional maritime software, based on transactions, does not really support situation awareness, why situation awareness is much more than a dashboard or user interface. How much situation awareness comes from e-mail, which is a very poor software tool

- why digital systems need an underlying model of how the shipping organisation works in order to support situation awareness. AI can help build it, but this model itself is not part of AI.

- How AI can help extract information from text / e-mail, connect this text to models, identify faulty data, help interpret voice commands, connect data in different file formats together

- preparing data for AI - including knowledge graphs, structured data, integrated data

- Challenges with AI - the insights from agentic tools need to be stored and managed; people need to know more than the AI does; risks of over-reliance; if we have a 'person in the loop' that person needs even more situation awareness

- Applying this in specific operational scenarios, such as day to day operations management, cybersecurity, emissions management

- Application of this to defence applications - can we build systems which can do the same as Palantir

 

Tickets - Eur 250, with Eur 200 early booking price if you register in by Oct 31st

 

 

About the workshop leaders:

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Karl jeffery and Dimitris Lyras have published 12 short books about better ways to build digital technology to support expert work, see Software for Domain Experts

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Dimitris Lyras is director of Lyras Shipping and Ulysses Systems, a maritime software company

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Karl jeffery is director of People Tech Maritime, a conference / event business on better ways to build digital technology to support people

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As an example of operational situation awareness, an operations manager wants to know that the vessel will be available to the charterer on the date agreed in the contract. If the survey is completed late, that may delay this leading to losing the contract. If the surveyor is going to be late, they want to know, so they can decide whether to find a new surveyor, renegotiate with the charterer, or take the risk that it will still be OK. The operations manager also needs to know the cause and effect - what happened last time this happened.

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Does the company normally lose charter contracts when the issuance of notice of readiness is delayed? Is it usually OK if a certain maintenance task is delayed for a week beyond what the planned management system states? Does a certain signal in the digital networks indicate a hack, and is there a chance it could be a serious one?

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The reason maritime software today doesn't do it so well is because it is almost entirely built on transactional systems of the past decades, which record when something was done, or tracked tasks which needed to be done according to a schedule. That is useful, but it isn't situation awareness.

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In the military / government sector, we see a small number of companies such as Palantir see great success from successfully delivering situation awareness to decision makers. It should be possible for more companies to have or make this without paying such big fees. This workshop will explore how it might be done.

 

Schedule:

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9.30 - understanding situation awareness in a digital context
10.15 - challenges involved in supporting situation awareness digitally
11.00 Break
11.20 How AI can assist digital systems
12.00 Examples of how to improve situation awareness for different roles
12.45 Finish 

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9.30 SECTION ONE: understanding situation awareness in a digital context

Examples of maritime situation awareness for different roles 

showing why it is more than just a discussion about user interface, 

It is about making information easier to find - the information is often available but needs hunting to find it - 

 

Situation awareness is often about integrating data, so we can put components together to get a deeper picture. 

why e-mail is very poor for situation awareness - e-mails share process updates, but a person needs a picture from multiple e-mails and other information sources.

people need to understand how new information may affect the current operation - this is hard for a system to deliver, but not impossible. 

people need to understand how the digital tools themselves work / process information, black box is not situation awareness. 

10.15 SECTION 2 - challenges involved in supporting situation awareness digitally

The digital system needs a model of how the organisation works - what causes lead to what effects, different roles and their needs.

What kind of model this can be.

Challenges of digital integration - harder for systems than for people

The importance of good data management / structuring

Implementing and maintaining systems

11.00 BREAK

11.25 Section 3: How AI can assist digital systems to provide situation awareness

- Supporting us to build underlying models
- Extracting the most useful information from text 
- Connecting text and data with models
- Identifying faulty data
- Spotting useful trends in data
- Need for systems to store and handle AI generated insights 
- Connecting different file formats together
- Challenge = people still need to know more than the AI
- If we have a 'person in the loop', that person needs even more situation awareness
- Risks of over-reliance on LLMs

12.10 Section 4: Examples of how to improve situation awareness for different roles

Discussion of applying this in:
Commercial / port operations management
Technical operations management - eg procurement manager, fleet manager, superintendent - What people in critical roles do, and what situation awareness they need

Emissions management
Cybersecurity management
Crew management and support 

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1.00 FINISH 

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