AWT Weather Routing/Routeing: Applied Weather Technology

Cutting costs and carbon with vessel optimisation (Digital Ship)

Applied Weather Technology has released a new version of its BonVoyage System for vessel optimisation, with a range of additional functionality newly included in the software package. Skip Vaccarello and Rich Brown, AWT, explained the improvements to Digital Ship

Vessel optimisation company Applied Weather Technology (AWT) has released Version 6.0 of its BonVoyage System (BVS) software, introducing some additional new features designed to help ship captains and fleet managers reduce fuel costs and curb CO2 emissions by planning the most fuel-efficient routes given the latest weather and sea conditions.

AWT claims that many of the new innovations in BVS 6.0 are completely new for the shipping industry, such as high-resolution NCOM (Naval Coastal Ocean Model) data, 16-day forecasts which are updated four times daily, and the integration of 10- years of historical climate data for the planning of voyages longer than 16 days.

With this latest version of the software having been released at the end of October, Skip Vaccarello, president and CEO of AWT, believes that current market conditions, including changes in fuel prices and an increasing focus on the environmental impact of ship emissions, as well as the global economic downturn, have increased the potential demand for this type of optimisation system.

"Our number one concern is safety for ships and crews, so whenever we route a ship that's our paramount concern, but another driver of the business is clearly cost savings, and on time arrivals," he told us.

"As fuel prices get higher these become significant drivers of the business. Just as one example, a ship could use as much as $500,000 of fuel to cross the Pacific, and we can demonstrate how we can save between 5 and 10 per cent of that fuel."

"That's $25,000 to $50,000, and it could be even more than that depending on the ship, for a service that typically costs $1,000 or less. I've been involved in other technology businesses, but this is the first one where you can clearly demonstrate on a piece of paper the return on investment you could get."

An additional benefit of these cost savings from reduced fuel consumption is, of course, a reduction in consequent CO2 emissions, and with one ton of fuel creating three tons of carbon dioxide this can start to add up very quickly.

"The environmental savings, the CO2 savings go along with that," said Mr Vaccarello. "That's another element, the whole shipping industry is looking at emissions so that increases the value of the type of service we can provide."

"This can immediately provide CO2 emissions savings and in fact doesn't cost anything, you'll save money doing it, while proposals to do things like putting scrubbers on stacks are $2 million or $3 million solutions."

"When we've estimated some of the savings, as a company, if people around the world closely followed the reductions that we've seen, about 450,000 metric tonnes of fuel could be saved, which would be 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, so it's pretty significant."

Enhanced data

One of the ways that AWT differentiates itself from other optimisation services is in the enhancement work that it performs on the data it receives from various sources.

Raw output data can be quite different to the enhanced information, with big differences in waves and winds and the inclement conditions that come with them, explains Rich Brown, AWT vice president of product management.

"Most people are just taking raw data, repackaging it and sending it out to the ship," he said. "We're actually making changes to it."

"We do a pre-process before we run a wave model to match the winds and pressure with what the government agencies are saying. This can make a dramatic difference. When you're simulating and optimising and trying to pick a route it will have a big impact."

"We actually getting two different sources of data and putting them together, and we've automated all that. When we simulate a ship it's 'where is he, and what time is it?', and we can run the data."

One such data source is NCOM, the Naval Coastal Ocean Model produced by the US Navy, which provides daily analysis of currents with 72 hour forecasts and one-eighth degree resolution.

To improve on this further AWT combines the data from this model with other sources, like, for instance, tidal data, to try and get the most accurate picture possible of sea conditions.

This method also extends to the use of climatological ship resistance models, used to predict at-sea conditions over longer periods by averaging out differences in weather over time. Mr Brown notes that the use of these averages can defeat the purpose of forecasting, to a great extent.

"Beyond the short range or medium range forecasts you use climatological weather, but when you average weather it ends up being very light," he told us. "If you're always down at the low end there's never much speed loss."

"What we did is take ten years' worth of historical weather data and ran billions of simulations, getting the speed losses based on headings, ship types and weather patterns patterns. This created a huge amount of data, which gives us a great tool for determining what the best recommendation should be."

"This is done for the whole world, for every day, for multiple ship types, containers, tankers, bulkers – there's about 15 different models we run just by ship type. We keep track of what's going on, what pattern we're in, and then project it out six months. Nobody else is doing anything like this, everyone else is using climatological weather, this is definitely a unique model we're using and it's giving us real good results."

New features

One of the new features within BVS 6.0 that AWT believes could make a big difference in voyage optimisation is the provision of higher-resolution updates of NCOM current data, which will allow vessels to view real-time analysis and forecasts of ocean current conditions at a quarter by quarter degree, rather than at the generally available one by one degree.

AWT says that it is the only company to offer NCOM data at this level of detail and accuracy, with users also able to request further nested high resolution wind, wave and swell data to show a more detailed view of areas of interest.

"It’s very fine resolution, if you get a small area of a route that you’re going to be doing you can really fine tune that – sometimes you can add ten miles but get 50 miles back, if you have the right currents," Mr Brown explained. "It can make a huge difference."

"We restrict the size of the area they can get (in high resolution) to avoid huge file sizes – if you got the whole North Pacific in quarter degree resolution it could get out of control, so we’ve tried to restrict that down so it will never be too big."

"For most ships there’s a limit of around 300kb, but the files are usually much less than that."

The company is also adding fuel optimisation into its system to combine with its route planning, an option that wasn’t available with the previous generations of BVS.

"With the fuel optimisation it’s not only planning the best track across the ocean, it’s also planning the best speed," said Mr Brown. "Those are really the two biggest things for fuel savings that a ship can do."

"For routing, if you run into a storm and have to change your route you can add two or three days, and that means you’re adding two or three days of fuel. With the speed, if you have an ETA window that you’re easily going to make, and you’re going full speed, you’re wasting fuel."

"With the time optimisation it figures out what speed is needed, based on the weather and currents, to make it on time. That tells the captain 'you're doing 20 knots, but you only need to be doing 10'. Generally speaking if you’re doing the time optimisation you’ll put in a speed and then it optimises that and tells you when you’re going to arrive."

The other major new feature is the provision of 16-day forecasts which are updated four times daily, which AWT says is unique in the industry.

"As far as I know all of our competitors are updating twice a day," said Mr Brown.

"A lot of people might say ‘how good is a 16-day forecast?’ but it’s really used for strategic route planning. If you know what the storm track is then tactically you can think about what is the best way to get around it."

"The key to strategic routing is to see where that storm track is, and that’s what this 16-day forecast is all about. If the captain has access to better data he’ll make better and safer decisions, which will reduce issues of cargo or the ship getting damaged, or of people getting injured."

The BVS 6.0 release is available with multiple service levels combining different combinations of data. Each of the three levels – BVS Viewer, BVS Planner, and BVS Ultra Planner – includes all of the data of the previous level, but with additional content.

The Ultra Planner level contains all of the newest features, including the high resolution data of NCOM currents. All levels have four times daily updating on different aspects of the service, and will be available under pay-as-you-download or monthly subscription options.

AWT Media Contact:

Cynthia Harris
PR Strategy Group for AWT
650/520-8343
charris@prstrategygroup.com