1 Towards Mitigation of Environmental Risks
9
potential accident would have minimum consequences. The end result is therefore a
variation of the ship routing.
A classical example of ship routing practice is the calculation of an optimal route
for crossing the North Atlantic (Calvert et al. 1991) under a particular distribution of
the sea state. Optimizing of routes with respect to persistent current patterns (Lo and
McCord 1995; McCord et al. 1999) is attempted frequently. The benefit of smart
ship routing is normally formulated in economical categories or from the safety
viewpoint. 4
Methods for the optimization of fairways have been addressed in numerous studies over the last decades (Calvert et al. 1991; McCord et al. 1999; Iakovou et al.
1999, among others). An overview of the state of the art of ship routing is given
in Christiansen et al. (2004). Efforts have mostly been directed towards developing
general algorithms for decision support systems. Their contemporary realizations
are based on the optimization of a large set of parameters such as the time of transit,
fuel consumption, exhaust emissions, forces on the ship and ship motions, and last
but not least, the overall cost of the total logistic chain. A description of selected
recent efforts is provided by the SEAROUTES 5 project. The outcome is a group of
alternatives of optimized routes based on the forecast of the sea state (waves, currents, winds, in particular), assimilation of hydrometeorological (in what follows
called metocean) data, and a specific optimization method. The methods and technology of (both long-term and operational) optimum ship routing systems, given
adequate metocean data and a relevant definition of risk, have been successfully
implemented in many parts of the world. They have, inter alia, also substantially
contributed to reducing the risk of collisions and groundings, and thus to an overall
decrease in the risk of accidents.
1.6 Environmental Management of Ship Routes
The problem of ship routing and/or fairway design is highly asymmetric. On the one
hand, the benefit from the smart use of metocean conditions is quite limited. For example, the potential annual cost savings of the world fleet that can be achieved by
smart routing through exploiting ocean currents was estimated to be on the order
of 70 million USD/yr already two decades ago (Lo et al. 1991). On the other hand,
the adverse consequences from sea transport can be quite large, for instance, in case
of malfunction due to severe weather. Kite-Powell (2011) estimated that average
expected annual losses to container shipping in the absence of good information
about extratropical storm conditions would be on the order of 250 million USD/yr
in the North Pacific and 120 million USD/yr in the North Atlantic. On top of that,
4 Note that in industrial shipping, ship routing is frequently interpreted in the narrower context of
scheduling, where the objective is to minimize the cost of a fixed fleet of ships.
5 http://www.tu-berlin.de/fb10/MAT/searoutes/.
9
potential accident would have minimum consequences. The end result is therefore a
variation of the ship routing.
A classical example of ship routing practice is the calculation of an optimal route
for crossing the North Atlantic (Calvert et al. 1991) under a particular distribution of
the sea state. Optimizing of routes with respect to persistent current patterns (Lo and
McCord 1995; McCord et al. 1999) is attempted frequently. The benefit of smart
ship routing is normally formulated in economical categories or from the safety
viewpoint. 4
Methods for the optimization of fairways have been addressed in numerous studies over the last decades (Calvert et al. 1991; McCord et al. 1999; Iakovou et al.
1999, among others). An overview of the state of the art of ship routing is given
in Christiansen et al. (2004). Efforts have mostly been directed towards developing
general algorithms for decision support systems. Their contemporary realizations
are based on the optimization of a large set of parameters such as the time of transit,
fuel consumption, exhaust emissions, forces on the ship and ship motions, and last
but not least, the overall cost of the total logistic chain. A description of selected
recent efforts is provided by the SEAROUTES 5 project. The outcome is a group of
alternatives of optimized routes based on the forecast of the sea state (waves, currents, winds, in particular), assimilation of hydrometeorological (in what follows
called metocean) data, and a specific optimization method. The methods and technology of (both long-term and operational) optimum ship routing systems, given
adequate metocean data and a relevant definition of risk, have been successfully
implemented in many parts of the world. They have, inter alia, also substantially
contributed to reducing the risk of collisions and groundings, and thus to an overall
decrease in the risk of accidents.
1.6 Environmental Management of Ship Routes
The problem of ship routing and/or fairway design is highly asymmetric. On the one
hand, the benefit from the smart use of metocean conditions is quite limited. For example, the potential annual cost savings of the world fleet that can be achieved by
smart routing through exploiting ocean currents was estimated to be on the order
of 70 million USD/yr already two decades ago (Lo et al. 1991). On the other hand,
the adverse consequences from sea transport can be quite large, for instance, in case
of malfunction due to severe weather. Kite-Powell (2011) estimated that average
expected annual losses to container shipping in the absence of good information
about extratropical storm conditions would be on the order of 250 million USD/yr
in the North Pacific and 120 million USD/yr in the North Atlantic. On top of that,
4 Note that in industrial shipping, ship routing is frequently interpreted in the narrower context of
scheduling, where the objective is to minimize the cost of a fixed fleet of ships.
5 http://www.tu-berlin.de/fb10/MAT/searoutes/.