Sustainability and energy efficiency issues, connected to the search for fuel consumption reductions and to the more and more mandatory international regulations regarding the emissions of atmospheric pollutants, are acquiring a growing relevance in shipping industry. In this context, the integration of forecasting resources for meteo-marine conditions with the capability of performing detailed ship performances simulations may give relevant contributions to improve the in service energy efficiency of ships through the use of weather routing systems. These systems are today widely used, almost in transoceanic navigation, and their effectiveness may be improved if they are utilized in integration with other energy efficiency measures and with observing systems for ship responses and encountered meteo-marine conditions. The work here reported has been developed in the context of the PROFUMO project, financed by the European Space Agency, in the framework of the IAP Artes 20 Programme for Feasibility Studies. Part of the project activities are devoted to perform numerical simulations of ship seakeeping and powering performances along Mediterranean routes, by the use of high resolution wind wave forecasts data produced by the operational service of Consorzio LaMMA. With this aim, in particular a numerical model of a real Ro-Ro ship has been constructed and the results of the numerical simulations are exploited to evaluate the potential impact of the variability of meteo-marine forecasting skills on weather routing and to estimate the potential contribution to fuel savings of meteorological route optimization at the Mediterranean scale.@en

In this work an integration of high-resolution meteo-marine forecast data with detailed ship powering and seakeeping computational algorithms is investigated in order to asses the potential for the attainable fuel savings by weather routing algorithms along relatively short routes (w.r.t. oceanic ones) as those in the Mediterranean Sea. The capability of high resolution models to predict the detailed space-time evolution of meteo-marine conditions at the Mediterranean basin scale is exploited in order to reliably forecast ship performances along Mediterranean routes. Based on this a computational framework applicable to weather routing algorithms is implemented and tested with the main goals of improving operational efficiency, by fuel savings, and of reducing the navigational risks connected to heavy weather at sea. The main elements of the proposed approach are: i) the construction of a detailed numerical model of a real ship; ii) the exploitation of in-service performance data recorded during real voyages of such a ship to tune its numerical model; iii) the use of high-resolution meteo-marine forecast and hindcast data for winds and complete directional wave spectra to assess the fuel saving potentialities of the implemented computational framework cited above. This last task is performed by exploiting forecast data coming from Ensemble Prediction Systems (EPS) applied to high resolution wind and wave forecasts. The obtained results are very interesting and encouraging to further develop the presented approaches. In particular a fuel saving potential ranging from few points of percentage till nearly 10% emerged from the two studied cases. Moreover the approach based on EPS reveled itself to be very useful as an investigation tool for the assessment of the reliability and stability of the fuel minimization with respect to forecast uncertainties.@en

This study introduces a novel framework of metocean prediction and ship performance models that integrate multiple layers of modeling to evaluate the environmental impact of ship emissions. It enables scenario simulations that assess a ship's performance, estimates pollutant emissions, and simulate the fate of these pollutants in the atmosphere. The study analyzes the fate of NOx, SO2, and PM10 pollutants in the atmosphere using spatially distributed concentration maps. It provides a comprehensive approach to assessing the environmental effects of ships and their emissions and contributes to the field of environmental impact assessment. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the framework's functionalities, evaluating the interrelationships between adverse meteo-marine conditions, pollutant emissions, and resulting atmospheric diffusion characteristics.@en

In the present study, scenario simulations are performed by integrating ship performance prediction models with meteo-marine forecasting and pollutants emissions transport models. By considering the detailed simulation of seakeeping and powering performance of a ship along predefined routes, in different realistic meteo-marine conditions, the concentration of the emitted pollutants and their fate in the atmosphere are analysed. The relationship between the increase of pollutants emissions due to adverse meteo-marine conditions and the corresponding pollutant diffusion characteristics of the ensuing atmospheric dynamics is investigated. In this paper the authors report the results of the first part of the study, finalized to better comprehend the numerical implementation details of an integrated system aimed at forecasting the powering performance and corresponding pollutant emissions impact based on realistic meteo-marine conditions and ship data.@en

The integrated use of modern seakeeping and powering computational techniques and state of the art meteo-marine forecasting and hindcasting resources has the potential of disclosing new ways to approach some relevant issues, such as for instance operations planning at sea, weather routing, in-service ship energy management and pollution control. Such an integrated approach could be profitably used during ship design for optimizing both hydrodynamic and powering characteristics too. In this paper the authors describe preliminary results of a study aimed at estimating the in-service optimal efficiency propulsion plant setting for a ship in real seaways conditions. To this aim numerical simulations of seakeeping and powering conditions of a ship along a real route in the Mediterranean sea have been performed. In the simulations detailed meteo-marine hindcasting data, consisting of wind data and complete directional waves spectra along the route, have been used. Strip theory has been applied for the seakeeping computation in order to evaluate the contribution of waves added resistance in realistic seaways. Such results have been then used in powering computation, to evaluate the dynamically evolving engine conditions in terms of fuel consumption. The results of such computations have been analyzed to evaluate the in-service optimization potentialities for the available setting of propulsion plant. Finally, heuristic hints are preliminarily suggested by the authors as a support for the use of scenario simulations with realistic meteo-marine data in the powering matching phases of the ship design process.@en