Artificial Intelligence in Shipping and Logistics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming business, science, technology, and medicine. Achievements that one could only dream of in the 20th century have materialized in the 21st: AlphaGo has beaten Lee Sedol at the game of Go, probably the hardest game that humanity has invented; intelligent machines created by an army of quants (mathematicians and computer scientists) have been gradually displacing human traders on Wall Street and in the City of London; protein folding, a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology, has essentially been solved by AlphaFold, with unprecedented implications for areas like drug design and environmental sustainability.

In this book, we consider the impact of AI on logistics and on the shipping industry. We consider such topical areas as predictive maintenance, route optimization, autonomous ships, cargo handling, supply chain management, environmental monitoring and compliance, risk management and safety, customer service and predictive analytics, port operation optimization, vessel performance monitoring, crew management and training, supply chain visibility, cargo security and risk assessment, weather forecasting and routing, trade compliance and documentation, energy management and efficiency, customer relationship management, and legal and regulatory compliance. We also briefly consider the future prospects of applying AI in shipping and logistics.