Case Study: Carnival Maritime achieves major water-production cost savings and operational efficiency with Microsoft Azure

Carnival Maritime is testing the waters with machine learning in the Cortana Intelligence Suite

Carnival Maritime, the marine service unit of Costa Group, operates a fleet of 26 cruise ships equipped with thousands of sensors and wanted to turn that data into actionable insights. The company faced a common challenge in asset-intensive industries: vast volumes of varied data and an immediate need to better predict operational needs—most pressingly, highly variable onboard water consumption that drives fuel use, bunkering decisions, and costs.

Working with Arundo, Carnival Maritime deployed a microservice on Microsoft Azure using Cortana Intelligence Suite, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, and machine learning to analyze historical sensor, voyage, passenger, and weather data. The models predict water demand to optimize onboard production (reducing or eliminating bunkering), cut fuel and CO2, and enable predictive maintenance; estimated savings exceed $200,000 per ship per year, and the solution is being piloted on select vessels.

Carnival Maritime

Alexander Klingelhoefer

Director of Continuous Improvement