The Future of Maritime Planning: Why Accuracy, Simplicity, and Shared Data Will Define the Next Decade

Systems Navigator
Apr 30
3 min read

In a recent Teqplay vodcast episode, Rienk Bijlsma joins host Léon Gommens to discuss how maritime planning is evolving and where the real value of operations research lies. The conversation challenges a common assumption in the industry: that progress is primarily about better tools. It isn’t.

The real shift is from building models to using them to make better decisions, faster, more accurately, and at scale.

Two men in a studio interview discussing maritime planning, seated at a table with a large screen behind them showing an aerial view of a busy port with ships, cranes, and containers. — Rienk Bijlsma and Léon Gommens

From data scarcity to data overload

Two decades ago, the main limitation in applying operations research was a lack of data. Today, that constraint has completely flipped.

As Bijlsma puts it:

“Data now is abundant. The trick is to transform it and turn it into information.”

Modern models are increasingly:

Data-driven
Directly populated from operational systems
Continuously updated

Looking ahead, even model creation itself is being redefined. With the emergence of AI and large language models enabling interaction-based model building. But that is not where the real value lies.

“The trick with all these models is not in building them, but in the analysis you can do with them.”

In maritime planning accuracy builds trust, nothing else

Man in a white shirt speaking during a maritime planning podcast interview, seated at a table with a blurred port scene in the background.

A recurring theme in the maritime industry is the demand for very high accuracy before users are willing to adopt new systems. However, the conversation reframes this expectation using a simple analogy.

“You start trusting systems when they are accurate.”

Navigation systems are not trusted because users understand the algorithm or validate the model, but because they consistently deliver reliable results. Maritime planning systems are no different. Trust is not created through dashboards, explanations, or added layers of transparency, but through consistent, observable performance over time. This puts the focus firmly on fundamentals: high-quality data, proper handling of delays and anomalies, and continuous improvement of predictive accuracy. As systems become more reliable, trust follows naturally.

Simplicity is harder than complexity

As data and analytics capabilities expand, many systems become more complex: more dashboards, more metrics, more visualizations. But complexity is not value.

“It is much harder to make something simple that paints a clear picture than to create a dashboard with all kinds of graphs.”

Effective decision support requires:

Clarity over completeness
Usability over feature density
Interfaces that can be understood instantly

If a planner cannot interpret the output immediately, the system fails, regardless of its technical sophistication.

The importance of time: planning vs. reality

Another important insight is the need to look beyond static outcomes. It is not enough to know what happened; what matters is understanding how a plan evolved over time.

This includes tracking what was planned, when it changed, and why those changes occurred. According to Bijlsma, this historical perspective is essential:

“It’s not only important what were the actuals… it’s also important what happened in the planning process.”

This approach is particularly relevant for areas like demurrage claims, performance improvement, and operational transparency, where the sequence of decisions matters just as much as the final result.

Maritime efficiency is a global issue

The conversation also highlights the broader importance of maritime logistics. It is not just an operational challenge but a critical component of global economic stability, especially when it comes to energy flows.

Entire economies depend on reliable maritime supply chains, and disruptions in key routes or nodes can have global consequences. In this context, simulation and operations research play a crucial role. Not only in optimizing current operations but also in designing new infrastructure and supporting strategic decisions.

Simulation, in particular, is increasingly used as a form of “insurance policy” for large capital investments, ensuring that decisions are both efficient and future-proof.

The next frontier: prediction and sharing

Looking ahead, two capabilities will define the next phase of maritime planning:

Planning accuracy	Schedule sharing
Estimating task durations reliably	Visibility across stakeholders
Continuously updating predictions during execution	Coordinated decision-making
Recalculating outcomes after disruptions	Network-level optimization

“If we start trusting predictions, we can start sharing them and that is what will make the industry more efficient.”

A clear direction for the industry

The episode ultimately points to a clear conclusion. The challenge is no longer data availability, nor is it model creation, the challenge is: