Lauritzen Cool sets up cargo information system
http://www.lauritzencool.com

Swedish refrigerated shipping company Lauritzen Cool, which operates around 60 vessels, is currently trailing a vessel information system developed by Seaware, which it confidently expects will lead to reduced vessel fuel bills and cargo damage. 

The software system gathers data from a motion sensor located onboard the vessel. From the data the sensor generates the software can calculate the accelerations of different parts of the vessel and hence the possibility of vessel and cargo damage. 

Although the project was initiated by Lauritzen, the development was made by Seaware, a company formed by a group of Swedish postgraduates at the Institute of Naval Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Seaware hopes to sell the system to the maritime industry at large.


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Motion sensors 

The software takes data from a motion sensor to calculate exactly how the ship is rocking on the waves, and from that estimates whether the cargo and vessel is at risk. 

It can calculate whether things will improve if the vessel speeds up, slows down or skirts around any bad weather causing the rough water. Alarms can be sounded if the risk reaches a particularly high point. 

The system generates data for various different parameters which can be used to help the ships master make a decision, including how fuel consumption, total journey time and cargo and vessel damage will change for different options of speed and navigation route. 

"A route planning function will be included in these two systems," he says. "If we know a weather situation ahead of us, we get information from Oceanroutes, we can feed this into the computer. The computer will then know what kind of wave situation we have ahead of us. "

"The system can work out if you go straight through the storm or go around it," he says. "You can take a course around the weather front, go a longer distance but you can go a bit faster."

"Its all mathematics," he says. "You have the sensor which feels the actual pitching and rolling; that's mode one. If you have a weather situation ahead of you you can put in the weather situation, with wind, wave height, swell
it will calculate by using pure mathematics what kind of accelerations it will give the ship when it goes in."

A possible third step is integrating a ship-shore communications component into the system, enabling monitoring of the cargo from shore. "We have discussed it quite a lot," says Mr van Sydow. 


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Commercial benefits 

Lauritzen has been working together with the Seaware group since 1998, with onboard trials running during this year. Two units will now be installed for operational purposes, with a view to extending the coverage to the full fleet if it works well. 

"We're very confident of reducing the number of cargo damages," comments Martin von Sydow of Lauritzen Cool's technical department. "It will be a good tool to officers on the bridge in knowing when they're in a dangerous situation and also knowing what to do."

"We will make an evaluation of these two units and try to quantify the savings in money," he comments. "Its very difficult to pass such a project to our board if it doesn't save the money." 

"From that we will make a decision if we go into step three, incorporating a ship-shore communications function."



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The crews' views

The system is going down very well with the seafarers, he claims. "The feedback is very good. It has a display system which is very easy to understand and its very easy to make decisions from the way the data is displayed." 

"One of our biggest queries was what will the crews think," he comments. "Will they regard this as a big brother, telling the captain who has 30 years at sea what to do? And is it complicated to use?"

"I think we've seen so many systems put onboard a ship which simply haven't been used because either they're too complicated or the crews just don't like them;
onboard decision support system you could say," he says. 

The software is preprogrammed with precise details about the vessel;s form, weight distribution and cargo distribution; it calculates how fast the different sectors of the ship are accelerating, and hence how high the risk of damage is, from the data from the motion sensor and its knowledge of the precise location of the motion sensor on the vessel. 

The sensors only need to be calibrated once, he says, and are proving quite robust; there is no need to recalibrate them with every journey. 

Although LauritzenCool was closely involved in initiating the project, the Seaware group are now looking for other buyers for the system.