Rising Star of the week: GBMS

A new concept is coming to life at EUROPORT 2021, the Rising Stars Pavilion powered by MARPRO. An area fully dedicated for promising maritime start-ups and next-gen innovators, where they can demonstrate how they contribute to a smarter, cleaner or/safer maritime future.

EUROPORT’s and MARPRO’s intention is to provide small start-ups a fair chance of showing their products and services to a large audience like EUROPORT is, for a budget friendly participation fee.

Company profile: GBMS

GBMS is a Dutch company developing a sensor and software systems, called SensoriumC, which will help to reduce lost containers at sea. The system will provide the ship’s crew with real-time information on the loads in the container stacks. This enables the crew to take informed actions and perform evasive actions when the loads are nearing any critical limits.

What is the idea behind GBMS and its services?

Over the last 20 years, an average of 1380 containers were registered as lost at sea. This number has increased in recent years due to increasing loading capacity of the ships, the pressure on the transporters to deliver in time and the increase and unpredictability of extreme weather conditions due to climate change.

Losing containers results in huge financial losses but is also a threat to the environment. Many of you will remember the photographs following the disaster concerning the MSC-ZOE in January 2019 or the ONE APUS in November 2020.

GBMS identified that the absence of a real-time alarm system which monitors the loads in the container stacks is an enormous disadvantage to the ship’s crew. At the moment, the crew has no means to know if they are losing containers, other than by visual inspection which is impossible at night or during bad weather. Even when incidents happen, it can take hours before the container loss is noticed.

GBMS’ SensoriumC system will fill this information vacuum and inform the crew in real-time when loads are nearing any critical limits.

How can GBMS contribute to a smarter maritime future?

By introducing the real-time monitoring of the container stacks, the ships crews will be more aware of critical situations and often will be able to take evasive actions to limit the loss of containers by altering the ships course or speed, or by adapting the ballasting of the ship to change the natural periods. In time GBMS will introduce new functionality increasing the awareness of the crew and contribute to a more stable supply chain.

How can GBMS contribute to a cleaner and safer maritime future?

The systems from GBMS will eventually lead to a decrease in lost and damaged containers and better route planning decisions. Containers which are lost at sea cause a tremendous threads to the environment and other ships, avoiding this therefore contributes to both the safety onboard and a save and healthy environment for other seafarers and the life at sea and on the shores. Less incidents means less wastage of time and fuel, helping both the economics as well as the environment from a holistic viewpoint.

Where is GBMS in five years from now?

In five years our initial SensoriumC system is installed on a wide range container vessels, supporting the crew in their decision making on safety and routing. The system may become an integral part of the renowned bridge systems and/or the loading and lashing computers onboard. GBMS will be developing more specialized tools to monitor the loads inside the container stacks and we will be able to send alarms when containers are experiencing extreme loads or are being displaced.

How is GBMS organized, and who are the key people?

GBMS was founded by Joris Brouwer(Msc) and Michiel Gunsing (PhD). Before starting GBMS, they were involved in many commercial and research projects at the Maritime Research Institute MARIN in Wageningen the Netherlands. They therefore, have a firm knowledge of ship hydrodynamics, seakeeping, numerical calculation, sensor techniques, data-analysis and motion-analysis. In addition, they have experience in the development of creating secure and stable software products and systems in and outside the maritime environment.