GLOBAL maritime safety organisation RightShip has joined Ports Australia, seeking to contribute in areas such as safety, sustainability and better use of data.
In a joint announcement, Ports Australia said RightShip would help ports via the use of intelligence and workflow management.
Australian ports see around 31,000 cargo vessel calls a year and have seen a year-on-year rise that mirrors the global demand, according to Ports Australia’s State of Trade report.
"The challenge for many ports isn’t just managing volume; it’s ensuring every movement is efficient, compliant, and sustainable," the statement read, noting RightShip had observed a fundamental shift in the management of safety and sustainability.
"Where decisions were once based on static reports, local knowledge or manual checks, ports today are expected to assess risk, safety and environmental impact using real-time data, shared platforms and increasingly automated workflows."
Some of RightShip's key insights included how technology and AI are reshaping port operations, why safety remains an under-recognised metric in data strategies, and what ports can do to better embed data into everyday decision-making.
RightShip chief product and technology officer Marlon Grech said there was a need to improve risk and safety as many processes across shipping remained highly fragmented.
“Not everyone does it in the same way, and a lot of it is still manual and time-consuming for the whole ecosystem," he said.
"There is also a lot of data that lives in silos, which makes risk evaluation much harder than it needs to be.”
Mr Grech said fragmentation made it difficult for ports and terminals to scale oversight, maintain consistency and respond quickly as vessel movements increased.
Ports Australia, meanwhile, said emissions transparency had become an increasingly important focus for ports and terminals.
It noted Australia had begun adopting more data-driven approaches to emissions analysis, including vessel-based modelling tools.
"These approaches support more granular understanding of vessel activity and enable ports to prepare for tightening regulatory expectations while informing long-term decarbonisation strategies," the statement read.
"Emissions modelling alone, however, does not tell the full story. When combined with vessel efficiency indicators that compare the relative emissions performance of visiting ships, ports gain additional context for interpreting emissions data.
"This includes understanding how individual vessels perform compared with others of a similar type and size."