The Naval Architect: October 2020
The Japan Weather Association (JWA) has unveiled a weather forecast and optimum ship routing service, Polaris Navigation, which the company says enhance both financial and ecological benefits for vessel operations.
The product, launched in March 2020, uses high-precision weather and ocean weather forecasting information technology, as well as ship propulsion performance estimation equipment which is calibrated for individual vessels.
According to JWA, its Polaris Navigation technology is suitable for both international and domestic voyages and during trial operation aboard a large coastal ro-ro carrier, the company says that with this technology, a 4.2% reduction in energy consumption has been achieved.
JWA’s system allows for efficient operations when working in combination with marine equipment from Japan Radio Co. Ltd (JRC).
Mirai Shipbuilding installed JRC’s high-speed satellite communications system, which utilises Inmarsat’s Fleet Xpress (FX), onboard the fishing vessel Shofuku Maru No.1. In this case, Polaris Navigation fitted for voyage schedule assistance and forecasting data, without considering the data volume required. POLARIS Navigation can also be linked with JRC’s JMR-5400 radar, allowing Shofuku Maru No.1’s calculated optimal route to be exported to its autopilot.
Polaris Navigation is part of JWA’s wider suite of Polaris services, which also includes; Polaris Forecast- for weather and ocean forecast data onboard, Polaris Hindcast – providing weather and ocean data relating to the ship’s track through a web application programming interface (API) and Polaris Plus- an online service for monitoring vessels which installed Polaris Forecast and Polaris Navigation.
