ENERGY EFFICIENT SHIP VOYAGE PLANNING BY 3D DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING

Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in ship management and operation. A proper fuel saving oriented routing strategy can be helpful in reducing running costs and pollutant emissions, as well as increasing the voyage safety and comfort. This paper presents a methodology for ship voyage planning based on 3D dynamic programming. It aims to select the optimum courses and related speed profile for a ship voyage in accordance to a minimum fuel consumption strategy, on the basis of the ship response to wave and wind conditions inferred from weather forecast maps. The ship voyage is parametrized as a multi-stage decision process where the fuel optimization is carried out in a discretized space-time domain and the optimal solution, in relation to the arrival time requirements and motion related constraints, is found by a dynamic programming algorithm which has been developed and implemented by the authors. Simulation trials for a merchant ship sailing different typical routes in the Mediterranean Sea, in a wide range of weather conditions and using high quality weather forecast maps, are presented and discussed. With respect to previous authors’ publications, the presented methodology shows the high potential benefit of detailed weather forecast maps as well as the innovative use of a minimum distance algorithm.