ABS CTO Delivers Primary Keynote Address at PRADS 2016

(From Left to Right) Prof. Jorgen Juncher Jensen, from DTU; Co-chair PRADS 2016 Howard Fireman, from ABS; Prof. Ulrik Dam Nielsen, Chairman PRADS; and Prof. Hans Norgaard Hansen, from DTU.

(Copenhagen, Denmark) ABS, a leading provider of classification and technical services to the global marine and offshore industries, led the launch of the tri-annual PRADS 2016 symposium with a challenge by ABS Chief Technology Officer Howard Fireman to alter conventional thinking. Delivering the primary keynote address to leading naval architects, marine engineers and academic visionaries, Fireman embarked on an evolutionary look across the maritime industry to provide a glimpse into the future of classification as it becomes wider and deeper in scope while maintaining its safety focus.

“As ship and asset structures have expanded and evolved in scale, efficiency and sustainability, so have the technologies developed and incorporated into them to make them safer and more cost-effective in operations and production,” says Fireman. “Our challenge today is imagining and applying disruptive technologies that prepare us for a cyber-based and data-driven tomorrow as evidenced by the industry’s evolution from twenty years ago to where it is headed twenty years from now.”

Discussing future projections surrounding the ways in which sensors and other new monitoring technologies incorporate voluminous amounts of data securely, Fireman encouraged PRADS 2016 attendees to embrace the future of classification as risk-informed, continuous and condition-based, and cyber-dependent and data-driven.

“We all must be technology-driven and continuously focused on the next generation of safety systems that extend well beyond the hardware,” Fireman said.

About ABS

Founded in 1862, ABS is a leading international classification organization devoted to promoting the security of life and property and preserving the natural environment through the development and verification of standards for the design, construction and operational maintenance of marine and offshore assets.

About PRADS 2016

Organized and hosted by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the PRADS 2016 symposium provides a stimulating framework where key academic and industrial practitioners discuss and demonstrate recent scientific and technological advances in the general areas of design and associated applications and/or operations of marine structures and systems. The symposium provides a forum where new research agendas and avenues for future research with high impact on the maritime community at large can be explored.