Dr Yvo Saanen Highlights the Promises and Pitfalls of New Technologies

In his keynote speech at TLME's Future-Proof Technologies Conference held in Dubai, Dr Yvo Saanen, Director of Portwise, outlined various myths and truths related to technology in the transport and logistics industry.

Dr Saanen started by introducing the term VUCA, which stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

"We are confronted with a world of uncertainty and we are looking for the right course," said Dr Saanen. And as you chart this course, is technology bringing you the business value you were looking for?

As an early adopter of technology Dr Saanen was one of the first people in the Netherlands to drive a Tesla. This car had a new weather prediction system called camera-based rain recognition.

It was a radical new technology touted as better than conventional sensors and it used AI to analyse millions of pictures for its forecasting. The technology however, has never worked in his car, stated Dr Saanen.

In this way, there are many new technologies that often promise more than they can deliver.

Another myth that Dr Saanen pointed out was about data. Many stakeholders think that if they can digitise all their data then their data problem is solved.

However, reliability of the data was still suspect. This created serious hurdles in the development of fool-proof and viable use cases where this data can help with day-to-day decision making.

Today, our systems are good at collecting data but finding real value in it was still a challenge. Even with technologies that are proven, implementation of the same at ports and terminals was progessing at a very slow pace, concluded Dr Saanen.

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