Op-Ed: Why data integrity is now central to vessel performance

Jacob Iversen, head of maritime partnerships EMEA, Weathernews

Jacob Iversen, head of maritime partnerships EMEA, Weathernews, explains how customer-driven emissions reporting is exposing structural weaknesses in vessel data, with direct consequences for performance, cost and commercial credibility.

For years, shipping’s data challenge has been about compliance. Can operators meet regulatory reporting requirements and submit the required data?

Today, a growing number of operators are being asked to provide emissions data that goes well beyond regulatory minimums, driven not by regulators but by their customers. Charterers, cargo owners and financiers are requesting granular, auditable CO2 reporting tied to specific voyages and cargo movements, often to support their own sustainability disclosures and internal decision-making.

This shifts the nature of the challenge. The data may exist, but can it be trusted?

Most operational data is still entered manually at the point of reporting, often under time pressure and without immediate validation. Errors introduced at this stage are difficult to detect downstream and are typically identified retrospectively, if at all, by shore-based teams. By that point, the data has already informed decisions on fuel consumption, performance, emissions and scheduling.

Small inaccuracies at the point of entry can distort assessment baselines, undermine emissions calculations and ultimately create uncertainty in commercial decision-making.

The implications extend beyond sustainability reporting. The same dataset underpins voyage optimization, fuel cost management, port scheduling and commercial planning. If the numbers are unreliable, the decisions built on them will be too. Missed ETAs, lay-cans, unexpected fuel consumption and emissions figures that are difficult to defend under scrutiny are often symptoms of this upstream data quality problem rather than isolated operational failures.

The experience of dry bulk operator Saga Welco illustrates the point. Despite owning and operating its vessels end-to-end, the company identified discrepancies in fleet data when faced with more demanding customer reporting requirements, ranging from simple entry errors to inconsistencies that internal controls could not reliably detect.

Working with Weathernews, the company implemented a browser-based vessel reporting system that validates data at the point of entry. The system applies vessel-specific logic rules, ensuring reported values fall within realistic operating parameters and are consistent with recent performance. An entry showing fuel consumption well above a vessel’s recent 24-hour average, for instance, will not be accepted. This prevents erroneous or misleading data from reaching shore-side systems in the first place.

The impact has been measurable. Saga Welco reduced vessel data errors by 30-40% and went 12 months without missing a single estimated time of arrival. Beyond improving reporting accuracy, this reduced the time spent investigating anomalies and created a consistent dataset across emissions, operations, finance and commercial teams.

This becomes particularly relevant as operators manage multiple fuel types, including biofuels, where inaccurate reporting can quickly distort emissions calculations.

Clean, validated data also supports better investment decisions because actual performance can be assessed accurately. It improves voyage execution because vessels perform more predictably and strengthens schedule reliability because ETA calculations are based on trusted inputs. These outcomes have clear implications for cost control and customer retention.

The industry has become accustomed to framing decarbonization as a question of targets and technology. These remain critical. But an operator that cannot demonstrate with confidence how its fleet is performing today is poorly positioned to make credible commitments about tomorrow.    

As customer expectations rise and reporting becomes more granular, inconsistencies that might previously have gone unnoticed are now exposed. This increases both commercial risk and reputational exposure, particularly where data is shared externally or used to support contractual or financial commitments.

Improving performance is no longer only about optimizing routes, reducing fuel consumption or adopting new technologies. It requires treating data integrity as a core operational discipline, embedded at the point of generation rather than corrected after the fact.

As the industry comes under closer scrutiny, that capability will distinguish operators who can guarantee performance from those still working to establish it.