Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Homer is a maritime start-up, born when Samantha Weckesser was a research assistant in a laboratory and given access to mammoth USCG data set on shipping containers that had failed inspection. The task: discover if any actionable information could be derived from that dataset to help find problems within the dataset that could relate to real-world problems. There was a problem. Undeclared or mis-declared cargos – particularly hazmat cargos – can end in catastrophe at sea and in port. Today, Homer offers Calypso, built on a machine learning model based on 20 years of date on failed container inspections, is a system to ‘go through’ containers, identifying the most high-risk units and predicting which are most likely to fail inspection. Weckesser takes a deep dive into the tech and the potential with Maritime Reporter TV.
Homer is a maritime start-up, born when Samantha Weckesser was a research assistant in a laboratory and given access to mammoth USCG data set on shipping containers that had failed inspection. The task: discover if any actionable information could be derived from that dataset to help find problems within the dataset that could relate to real-world problems. There was a problem. Undeclared or mis-declared cargos – particularly hazmat cargos – can end in catastrophe at sea and in port. Today, Homer offers Calypso, built on a machine learning model based on 20 years of date on failed container inspections, is a system to ‘go through’ containers, identifying the most high-risk units and predicting which are most likely to fail inspection. Weckesser takes a deep dive into the tech and the potential with Maritime Reporter TV.
