ESABALT – Is there a business potential? Yes ofcourse!

The potential market for ESABALT comprises of all those who navigate or plan to navigate in the Baltic, commercial as well as non-commercial. The market opportunity lies not necessarily in the users. ESABALT is planned to be free for end-users, but paid by other information providers, such as harbours, ports, and other service providers who are interested in the market of crowdsourced maritime data. This manner of an approach will bring benefits from an open-source type of a system. The project will demonstrate that a trusted, independent intermediary can collect, process, and store location and other maritime data using transparent and clearly documented methods. This will bring about a revolution in the location-based maritime services industry in particular small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)—and the maritime community. Companies and other entities can access the information derived from the crowdsourced maritime data to build innovative applications. For the shipping industry, ESABALT will contribute towards fuel-efficient and safe shipping resulting in reduced insurance costs. Integrating pleasure boats into the data crowdsourcing will enable them to contribute to coastal surveillance and monitoring, thus reducing the burden on already resource-strapped coastal authorities. Therefore, the system impact can be summarized in three categories; increased information sharing, increased number of users and aggregated information overview across national boundaries and administrative sectors.