Finland has been one of the leading countries in the digitalization and automation of the marine industries. INTENS, a VTT-coordinated industry-wide joint effort dedicated to advancing and promoting the digital transformation in Finnish marine industries and beyond, is one of the most recent successful actions on smart and green shipping.
The INTENS project aimed at further deepening and uniquely integrating digital transformation into the whole chain of the marine cluster, from R&D to innovation, design, manufacturing, and operation. The generated novel solutions and innovations can largely improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions of ship energy systems, mitigate global climate change, disrupt the ways how the maritime industries operate currently and pave the way to the future shipping.
“INTENS has given its partners a unique opportunity to jointly research and develop industry-leading novel solutions and innovations to address the major challenges faced by the global shipping industry” says Vice President of Mobility and Transport, Johannes Hyrynen, from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd.
“Over 60 novel software and physical products and over 150 scientific publications have been generated during the project, having led to significant research and business impacts and resulted in 26 new business and R&D projects with total volume of over 22 M€, which further strengthens Finland’s global position as a technology-innovation leader in ship design, system integration, building and operation.” Johannes Hyrynen adds.
“Deltamarin is proud to have been a member in the INTENS consortium, where we have enhanced our knowledge of ship operational data handling and various optimization methods and hence developed our new generation ship design process,” says Mia Elg, R&D Manager at Deltamarin Oy.
“Our latest results involved adding optimization as another dimension to ship design and as an integrated part of the regular design process. In practise, the process now brings more value to the ship concept design as for the same time we set up manual simulations, we can now run thousands of possible scenarios and focus on selected solutions. All of this is really useful in ship design projects where all future ships must not only pass EEDI or EEXI but will also need to reach a certain level of carbon intensity.” Mia Elg continues.
“Although the project itself has come to an end, the fruitful collaboration and co-innovation among the INTENS partners is continuing in many ways. The direct and indirect research and business impacts will be surely visible, not only generating scientific and technological innovations but also creating sustainable and globally competitive businesses, and hence strengthen Finland’s green and innovative global image in the years to come.” concludes INTENS Project Coordinator, Zou Guangrong, from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd.