We spent the entire day at UNIC learning about Fleet Management, Cryptocurrency, and Forecasting. The first meeting was with Fleet Management Limited, one of the largest third party ship management companies managing over 600 diverse types of vessels. In 1996 they started off with only 13 vessels and now they have over 600. The pandemic impacted them because they were not able to sign off people and had a difficult time loading and discharging at ports. This made it difficult to keep a consistent routine. I thought it was really cool how they won the Green Award and Energy Efficiency Award which shows how much they care about environmental sustainability. Out of the 2000 seafarers, 100 are females but they are currently trying to encourage more females to take on this career. They said that once women see the conditions they are working under they hesitate to begin the career. They use a software called PARIS where it is connected to the ship owners and workers. By using this software they are able to see the position of the ship, where it is heading, and the cargo it is carrying. This makes it a lot easier for everyone working within the management.
Our next lecture was about cryptocurrency and blockchain by the CEO of UNIC. It was interesting to see that UNIC accepts bitcoin as a form of payment for the school. I thought it was different that the school offered courses on cryptocurrency. Like the internet, he said it would take awhile to get used to our society, but it could become a common practice in the future. We might not use cryptocurrency for small purchases such as a coffee, but it’ll be very useful for larger purchases. He gave an example of when someone that he knew was stepped on by an elephant in Africa but he was in Cyprus and she needed instant care. Since they were in different places it was difficult to transfer the money in time. It could take at least two days but she needed care right away. With the use of cryptocurrency the transfer of money internationally can be made a lot faster.
Our last lecture was given by Dr. Spyros Makridakis, where he focuses on Data Forecasting. Data forecasting isn’t something that I knew much about before but it was cool to see that the professor created the M competition. He talked about how it is difficult to use forecasting to predict cars, technology and its devices, but it’s mostly used for predicting how many items are needed to be in stock at a store, their main concentration being Walmart. He said that machine learning makes more accurate predictions than statistical methods because the methods do all of the work. It is difficult to accurately predict what will happen because things can happen out of nowhere such as COVID. They try to focus on the environment to make more accurate predictions.