Without a doubt shipping is the most efficient mode of transportation for goods. 90 % of Europe's trade with therest of the world and 43 % of intra-European trade is shipped through its seaports. This success has distractedattention away from the fact that shipping is a major contributor to environmentally damaging emissions and that theshipping industry can improve the efficiency of its operations. In the last decade legislators and industry havebecome more active seeking solutions to improve efficiency and reduce emissions.SEMAFORS, the ship efficiency monitoring, weather forecasting and optimised routing service is a user focusedproject in support of the shipping industry. The goal of the SEMAFORS project is to show that an economicallyjustifiable and exploitable solution can be realised to provide substantial benefits to the shipping community in theform of fuel savings whilst providing a positive contribution to safety of operation and help improve port resourceutilisation. The SEMAFORS concept seeks to gain improvements by integrating current solutions for weatherrouting and route planning taking advantage of additional satellite based data such as global sea currents andapplying new routing algorithms.It is expected that SEMAFORS will provide an added benefit, namely, a reduction of emissions and hencepollution particularly in coastal areas and ports through a better managed ship arrival and departure time. Byreducing the risk during the voyage of incurring delays improved planning should be possible which in turn willmake it possible to arrive at a port at the requested time of arrival and allow a smooth passage into the harbour andberth with a minimum of delay. Currently, preference is given to arrive early to port, however this frequently resultsin long periods of loitering in anchorage areas at the port entrance due to port entry slot unavailability.The demonstration project is an activity carried out by BMT ARGOSS and The Reading University. BMTARGOSS is a Dutch company experienced in the provisioning of meteorological and oceanographic solutions forthe offshore, coastal, harbour and shipping sectors, locally and globally. The Reading University (United Kingdom) hosts the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) and has contributed to solutions used by the UKMet Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather forecasting.The service is targeted to vessels with a fuel consumption of 20 metric tons/day or more of Heavy Fuel Oil(HFO) – mainly bulk carriers, container ships and tankers – and/or vessels requiring an accurate Estimated Time ofArrival (ETA) – ferries, cruise ships and LNG carriers among others. Vessels representative of these differentshipping sectors participate in the project demonstration trials and validation. In addition, the Port of Rotterdamparticipates in the project provisioning port-related data and contributing to the service validation.This paper introduces the SEMAFORS concept, background, and architecture, detailing the key technicalchallenges, and how these respond to the users' needs.
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