Toward the use of big data in smart ships

The evolution towards "smart" vehicles, including ships, is well under way. It is driven by the promise of many valuable applications, but made possible, in large part, by the revolutions in technologies such as Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence. We are a few decades into the production application of Big Data in industries such as Telecom, Finance, and Media; and nearly a decade into advanced development in areas such as Healthcare, Autonomous Vehicles, and Smart Grid. Shipping involves some unique challenges in networking, analytics, and implementation, but some of the fundamental tasks will be similar. We focus on the issue of Big Data, and on the essential role of understanding the data that exists, the data that will be needed, and, through careful metadata creation and management, the fitness of that data in terms of properties such as: quality, latency, structure, volume/velocity, provenance, and others.