Bridges accumulate tools the way cities accumulate streets: one regulation, one optimisation goal, one vendor at a time, with no master plan. The result is layered architecture, vendor lock-in, unstructured data, and a design process that starts a long way from the people at the sharp end.
This article explains why bridge integration keeps failing, from vendor lock-in and unstructured data to a design process that starts far from the crew.
One reason digital systems can fail to reduce workload is that they have evolved incrementally, without a structured approach to their adoption. For example, new regulations lead to the introduction of new reporting tools, new optimisation goals bring in new platforms, and legacy systems remain in place alongside newer ones.
This layering effect is not just technical but commercial. Alexander McDonald argued, “they don’t want their equipment to talk to another manufacturer’s,” highlighting how vendor incentives can work against integration onboard.
Over time, this leads to vessels accumulating tools that might be effective in isolation but fail to integrate. The difficulty stems from how they interact; crews must navigate between complex platforms and understand how different processes connect.
For the officer of the watch, this often means moving between systems that were never designed to work together. One platform may display navigation data one way, another may present alarms differently, while a third may require separate manual input for reporting or performance monitoring.
Even where information is technically available, it may not be easy to compare or interpret. This creates additional work, as systems can require bridge teams to verify, translate, and reconcile information before they can act on it.
In this kind of environment, safe performance depends heavily on individual familiarity and experience, which makes the operation more fragile than it appears.
As Marco Vatteroni, Secretary General of Shipdex, explained in relation to technical manuals and documentation, “today, data is exchanged in an unstructured format. Every maker, every shipyard has a different format.” This helps explain why technical documentation can remain difficult to integrate into digital workflows, even when the underlying systems function well.
Even when each individual system is functioning well, this lack of a centralised view tends to introduce ambiguity and increase the chance of misinterpretation. The IMO’s e-navigation strategy recognises this challenge and underscores the need for harmonised, integrated systems across ship and shore environments.
However, other research into maritime digitalisation continues to identify fragmentation and a lack of standards as key blockers, leading to a layered system architecture which only increases the complexity bridge teams face.
Marco Vatteroni also described a more basic issue regarding how the industry treats information. As he put it, “they say, ‘For us, PDF is enough.’ But PDF cannot be enough.” Many shipping workflows still rely on digital documents that behave like paper, rather than structured data that can move easily across systems.
The challenge is organisational and technical, as different systems are often introduced by different stakeholders, including equipment manufacturers, software providers, regulators, and internal performance teams, each with their own priorities.
This disconnect tends to start during the design phase. Amitvikram Chitnis explained, “most of the systems you have teams giving the concept to the IT team. Now the IT team has never had the operational experience.”
In these situations, potential problems do not only include system failure but also the crew’s ability to maintain situational awareness under pressure. A design that seems straightforward for an IT native may not be easy to interpret in a real-world, busy shipping environment.
Download ‘Decision-optimised or Overloaded?’ and discover how digital navigation is changing the reality of modern bridge operations.
Download The Full Report
