With climate change's effects being more obvious as time passes, the melting of ice caps has lured shipping and trading community into investigating the possibility of switching the main trading routes of today (Suez and Panama Canals) for alternative, shorter routes that discourse through the Arctic Ocean. This thesis aims to assess the accessibility and profitability of these routes using an A*-based ship weather routing algorithm, via the software SIMROUTE. The model takes into account the effects of ice on safety and navigation speed, already considered by other studies on the Arctic, as well as storms and waves, which are to become to main factor to consider with the retrieval of sea ice. A number of exercises and sensibility tests were be carried out varying the calculus parameters in a pre-established route in the North-Atlantic Arctic region.
The methodology applied onto the software proved to be a challenge for the attainment of coherent results when taking ice into account. The changes needed to solve the limitations of the software were out of the scope of this thesis. Despite this, a series of qualitative conclusions could be drawn. In terms of navigation in ice, the academic tests indicated that ship weather routing could be applicable for PC6-type icebreakers and return significant profit in the form of time savings. The application of ship weather routing to PC6 tests in the Hudson Bay resulted in time savings ranging between 10\% and 25\% of the minimum distance route. The thesis also assesses the need to consider both waves and ice in the calculations and the effects on travel time and trajectory. In general, it is found that ship weather routing is an applicable methodology for Arctic shipping and that significant profits can be taken from it, especially in the future with the predicted increment of wave and storms size. However, the methodology and software should be changed to correctly solve problems with ice presence.
gmail.com
