Nowcasting International’s Maritta Buwalda explains how.<\/p>\n
Accurate, location-based forecasting is the new approach to marine weather forecasts proving a vital resource for ports and their operators. With the advancement of technology many harbour masters know what conditions they have in their ports thanks to weather stations, but for planning, still need higher quality forecasts.<\/p>\n
Forecasting and port planning are critical for customer service, the planning of pilots and tugs, berthing, etc. and a location-based forecast can be the key to optimising a port’s efficiencies and safety.<\/p>\n
Pilots benefit from knowing what conditions are going to be like while boarding and guiding vessels into harbour. “Nowcasting Pro Port enables us to plan the movements of larger ships in a more reliable manner which improves port efficiency and enables us to deliver a better service to our customers, ” according to Fergus Britton, assistant harbour master at Dublin Port.<\/p>\n
Nowcasting’s new NPro Port service is based on providing highresolution weather forecast data for the port’s location, with 15 nautical mile spatial resolution. This system allows harbour masters and pilots access to some of the most up-to-date weather information available. The system is designed around giving accurate and reliable information for 48 hours and is updated four times daily.<\/p>\n
It is a PC based software and its patented technology allows the user to download high-resolution forecasts from the Maritime Nowcasting Server, which provides weather data on parameters including wind speed and direction at both 10 and 50 metres and sea state including significant wave height, swell period and direction and swell height. The service is request-driven and easy to use ensuring the user is able to download weather information at a touch of a button whenever he wants it. The forecast is displayed in hourly steps for the first 24 hours and 3-hourly after that up to 48 hours.<\/p>\n
NPro Port uses the Internet to download data onto the user’s PC.<\/p>\n
The built-in archiving function records any forecasts taken on the system. These can then be reviewed in the application at any time by opening the record for the specific day or forecast taken. This function was developed as a result of customer demand for incident and project reporting.<\/p>\n
The Port of London Authority has been using Nowcasting Pro for the past two years and recently upgraded to Pro 4 with Networking capabilities. It has been seen as a useful tool in the port’s operations from vessel movements to routine operational repairs on navigational marks.<\/p>\n
This kind of forecasting is an innovative approach wherein a private company provides state-of-the-art forecast delivery and presentation systems and uses this technology to broker weather forecasts for large areas of the globe. The forecasts brokered in this way are selected on the basis of the level of skill that can be demonstrated for a given area. Nowcasting now has suppliers in both the US and Europe.<\/p>\n
The benefits from accurate location-based forecasts include an increase in the use of short weather windows leading to safe and more cost effective planning and scheduling; increased safety of vessels, pilots, crew and stevedores; and improvements in the safety of shipping movements in port, especially involving hazardous cargoes or larger vessels, where more accurate planning of mooring requirements is needed.<\/p>\n
It is therefore a useful tool in areas of poor manoeuvrability as Dublin’s Fergus Britton illustrates: “We had a car carrier waiting to dock, Nowcasting Pro revealed a weather window for only a few hours and we managed to get the vessel docked. If we had not seen this opportunity the vessel would have had to wait another day before docking.”<\/p>\n
Maritta can be contacted at maritta. buwalda@nowcasting. ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In weather sensitive operations the availability of short term, high-resolution data can greatly assist in the effective utilisation of time and equipment, and in optimising the profitability of operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-equipment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}