Today marks day three of our countdown to International Women’s Day 2019 (IWD19), for which we are profiling women who are leading technological innovation in maritime and technology.
Days one and two saw us profile Royal Haskoning’s Smart Ports and Business Development Director Nicola Clay and INFORM’s Vice-President Dr Eva Savelsberg.
Today, we turn our attention to Nadia Hewett, Project Lead for Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution (WEF C4IR).
In Edition 80: ‘Ports of the Future’, Hewett contributed a technical paper called ‘Blockchain and Supply Chain Integration’ in which she urged the maritime industry to strive towards interoperability – the process by which different technological systems communicate with one another.
Read ‘Blockchain and Supply Chain Integration’ by Nadia Hewett here
While the industry has keenly sought to use blockchain as a means of storing and sharing data, as well as increase operational efficiencies, it is seeing several solutions developed entirely independent of each other.
In August 2018, Maersk, the world’s biggest container shipping line, and IBM launched a blockchain initiative to streamline the global supply chain.
#SPSC18 The final panel offers more expert analysis on #Blockchain from specialists Katherine Foster (@foster_change) and Nadia Hewett (@NadiaHewett).
How will this help us share information and mitigate risks?#WomeninBusiness @wef @un_BLOC pic.twitter.com/NUtosOuUsx
— Port Technology (PTI) (@PortTechnology) October 3, 2018
In November they were followed by a separate blockchain venture involving DP World, PSA and a series of huge liners, including COSCO and CMA CGM.
Hewett said that the first step for the industry is to develop standards and governance of blockchain and that a number of organisations have started to define a universal framework, but that “the idea of interoperability for different ledgers is still relatively new and many are in the ideas phase.
For more information on how blockchain can accelerate innovation and collaboration in the maritime sector, make sure you download Hewett’s paper in the link above.
Come back tomorrow for day four of our countdown to IWD19, when we will be profiling another of the industry’s leading women.
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