Pilot 4: Weather Routing and Fleet Intelligence Service in Shipping
This pilot aims at enhancing fleet operation optimizations by pursuing several goals on both vessel and fleet scale: a higher accuracy in vessel performance simulation, a proactive adjustment of the voyage plan to respond to variations in the weather forecast, and increased awareness and prediction of ship operations and waiting time. Exploiting models and services developed in VesselAI project NAPA could evaluate the benefits of utilizing artificial intelligence techniques to improve the offering to the maritime industry by supporting and complementing classical methodologies in different aspects, including accuracy, computational time and user experience, and scalability.
Use Cases
During the first evaluation period of the project, the focus of the pilot was on the following use cases
Voyage Optimisation
Shipping companies and operators are supported in all phases of voyage planning, both onboard and ashore, with a simple and intuitive user interface to handle workflow and information exchange and to enable actions at each step. This starts with voyage optimization with improved accuracy in the estimation of costs and voyage duration
Real-time Monitoring of Fleet Operations
Real-time monitoring of fleet operations send notifications of potential deviations due to dynamically evolving conditions, and perform comparisons with alternative proposals en route, enabling a holistic approach to optimize the operations of the whole fleet by improving scheduling thanks to increased awareness and prediction of time spent at berth and waiting at anchorage.
Pilot-participating Partners
Pilot Technological Highlights
The technological highlights of this pilot were the following
- World fleet database for ship characteristics
- AIS (Automatic Identification System) for tracking vessels' operations
- Weather forecasts and bathymetry
- Daily reports and high-frequency sensors' measurements to monitor performances and improve predictions
- Information about safe navigation passages in restricted waters
Pilot Results
Advanced clustering techniques of AIS data in and near ports allowed us to reconstruct ports and terminals layouts more quickly and robustly, enabling a reliable estimation and prediction of time spent at berth and waiting at anchorage. VesselAI Pilot 4's focus on weather routing and fleet intelligence service brings promising solutions to the shipping industry. By adopting these operational methods, companies can significantly reduce fuel consumption, cut emissions, and embrace a more sustainable future.