Weathernews in a class of its own with powerful data-driven business analytics

World’s leading weather intelligence specialist uses data streamed from its subscriber fleet combined with its vast bank of data harvested over a decade of service provision to optimize every vessel voyage in line with customers’ unique business priorities.

Weathernews combines the highest frequency of AIS data available to the shipping industry today with a wealth of historical voyage data received through its Optimum Ship Routeing (OSR) and Performance Monitoring Services (PMS) sea-planning tools.

“We receive routing/leg data from 5,000 customer vessels per month in real time, adding to our historical leg and vessel report data for the last 10-plus years. Plus, we get AIS data on more than 32,000 vessels sailing worldwide coming into our database every two to 10 minutes. It’s a mind-boggling amount of data,” says Copenhagen-based Development Manager and Chief Engineer at Weathernews, Jo?o Fernandes.

Robust foundation

These data provide Weathernews with unparalleled insight to support customers in making optimal business decisions on key voyage parameters ranging from Required Time of Arrival and Minimum Voyage Cost to Least Bunker Consumption and Sailing Voyage Patterns.

“We now have more than 20 terabytes (TB) of maritime big data stored in our fully managed AWS [Amazon] cloud database in a secure and reliable manner. Being the dominant voyage data stakeholder in the market with the biggest weather-routing customer base allows us to create our own benchmark,” says Fernandes.

Given its sheer quantity of data and original benchmarking, Weathernews is helping to drive rapid digital transformation of the shipping industry.

DevOps boost agility

“We’ve also migrated our entire application development process to DevOps, enabling agile development of our IT infrastructure, data analytics and advanced services,” says Fernandes.

He explains that the concept unites people, process and technology to continually provide value to customers. “DevOps practices allow us to coordinate and collaborate to improve the versatility of our service tools. We can respond faster to customer needs, increase reliability of our applications and help them achieve their business objectives more efficiently.”

Weathernews new IT system, also based on cloud computing, also clearly separates the data layer from the User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) layer. “This makes everything much tidier to manage and easier to use,” says Fernandes.

“Now if we have data in our storage, it takes only a few weeks to display it externally in a novel format. That process used to take months of work using the waterfall model of software development where every project phase had to be completely wrapped up before moving to the next one in a downward fashion,” he adds.

Plugging the gaps

The revamped system also facilitates the highest-quality original vessel reports with almost zero missing or erroneous data. “In the few cases where data is missing, integrated automatic data estimation fills in the gaps. We can also use the QRT [Online Query Reporting Tool] to query the database for optimal analysis, or use the cloud simulation tool to manipulate the data in myriad different ways,” Fernandes adds. This allows the development team to experiment with novel added-value functionalities.

On a mission to lower emissions

The new way of working also lies behind Weathernews’ recent upgrade of OSR-e and PMS-e as part of its Total Fleet Management Service concept to support customers manage their emissions goals. Both update the existing OSR and PMS services incorporating additional Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) and CO2 environmental content. The strategy is to help fleet operators establish seamless emissions target management and reporting.

“The overall value proposition is to manage both CII rating and CO2 targets as part of customers’ decarbonization efforts. Combining our system with risk communications while enjoying the value provided from our legacy OSR and PMS services provides a cost-effective, one-stop service solution with superior monitoring and the best real-time voyage routing,” says Fernandes.

“We really have transformed the way we work. It’s an exciting time as it opens up new opportunities to extend and improve our services on an ongoing basis. For me that’s the essence of agility. Personally, I find it very rewarding to work on digital solutions that contribute directly to the long-term sustainability of maritime operations. We listen closely to our customers and can respond fast with tools that preserve the planet while supporting profitability,” he concludes.