Ship routing optimisation based on forecasted weather data and considering safety criteria

Abstract A weather routing tool is presented based on forecasted weather data along the route and considering safety aspects. The tool aims to determine the optimal path for the minimisation of the fuel oil consumption, ensuring a safe passage. It is developed in MATLAB and considers detailed ship characteristics. Specifically, ship's motions and fuel oil consumption of the main engine during a potential path are estimated. For the latter, a physics-based model for a specific vessel is developed where tools of different level of detail are utilised to calculate the various resistance components. A speed management strategy along the route is specified as well as safety criteria representing acceptable limits of ship's responses. When the set criteria and constraints have been set, a genetic algorithm is used to find the optimal route by means of ship's heading or by considering both heading and ship's power settings as variables to minimise the fuel oil consumption. The search space of the algorithm lies within a predefined envelop, but still the evolutionary optimisation approach used has no pre-assigned values to any possible candidate waypoint.