The MariData project is funded by BMWK and aims to enable a deterministic analysis of a ship’s energy demand based on environmental and physical conditions. It sensibly delineates the energy demands of various sources to provide tools for an energy optimized ship routing and management. This leads to suggested routing alternatives, speed and trim adjustments or additional services on the ship hull.

MariGeoRoute is a subproject addressing the challenges related to needs arising from the various data demands, such as nautical maps, weather records and forecasts ranging from wind and temperature to wave heights and currents. 52°North develops an integrated data store, the GeoPlatform, which will provide data for on shore services as well as for the ships at sea. It needs to sensibly subset and preprocess the data to reduce data load. We will also develop approaches based on machine learning (ML) to model the energy demand based on the data collected and derived from the consortial partners. A routing service developed by 52°North will use the data accessible in the GeoPlatform to provide routing alternatives along the smallest energy demands under constraints of nautical limitations, ship safety and delivery schedules.

In 2023, 52°North continued to develop the GeoPlatform, focusing on the implementation and provision of routing algorithms. In the GeoPlatform, environmental forecasts are provided as WMS layers with predefined styles (e.g., wind barbs, arrows, isolines, heat maps) for visualization in the Decision Support System (DSS) front-end and as part of an Open Data Cube instance for efficient use by the routing algorithms. Water depth information from NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information) and nautical maps from Open Sea Map were imported to take into account important constraints on the selected routes. Our team developed a routing algorithm using the isochrone method, which considers environmental forecasts, water depth and nautical map constraints (separation zones and restricted areas) and fixed waypoints. Since the focus of the project is to provide routes that minimize fuel consumption, we then transferred the isochrone method to the development of an isofuel algorithm. 52°North is currently developing a genetic algorithm that overcomes some limitations of the iso* algorithms and plans to complete this in the near future. Optimized routes can be requested via a routing API now available in the GeoPlatform.

In addition to these technical developments, 52°North supported the project partners at the University of Lübeck in conducting several simulation studies with users of the DSS. We also participated in a DSS component test in the ship simulator at the Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.