Fintraffic´s Vessel Traffic Services joins the Green Shipping Challenge of the UN Climate Change Conference
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt aims to find solutions to mitigate climate change. Solutions of Fintraffic´s Vessel Traffic Services are strongly present in the Green Shipping climate project demonstrating at the meeting the means to reduce climate emissions. Fintraffic’s digitalisation projects have already reduced sea transport emissions in Finland.
The launch of the Green Shipping Challenge at the conference was joined by more than 40 countries, ports and businesses that introduced their innovations and development projects supporting more eco-friendly sea traffic. From Finland, the Green Shipping Challenge was participated in by four projects, two of which were Fintraffic’s spearhead projects in sustainable development and digitalisation of vessel traffic services.
“Fintraffic´s Vessel Traffic Services influences the carbon footprint of maritime and port logistics through strong use of digitalisation and data. One of the most important targets of development is as accurate timetable information on commercial vessels as possible, which allows for maritime and land freight to be combined into efficient transport chains in the port and provides a common snapshot of the operations. The positive environmental impact is considerable; in the Baltic Sea region, it could reduce the CO2 emissions and fuel costs of vessels by up to a quarter. The benefits arise from options such as a vessel being able to lower its speed if the land logistics are not ready for them,” says Programme Manager Olli Soininen from Fintraffic´s Vessel Traffic Services.
The projects presented in Fintraffic’s Green Shipping Challenge were the Port Call Time Stamp and Estimation Service & Port Activity application, developed in cooperation with the Finnish companies Awake.AI and Unikie, and the longer-term Virtual Port Arrival concept developed with Siili Solutions under the NEMO project.
The Port Call Time Stamp and Estimation Service provides more accurate vessel arrival and departure times at Finnish ports for various port operators. The service is based on analysing data by means of machine learning. The basic idea of the Port Activity application is to improve the flow of information between all stakeholders operating in a port while providing a common snapshot that enables the most efficient and economical port calls possible. Port Activity serves as an end user application for the Port Call Time Stamp and Estimation Service.
The idea behind Virtual Arrival is to slow down the speed of a vessel to match the revised time of arrival if the berth will not be vacant when the vessel arrives at the port. Despite the postponed time of arrival, the vessel retains its place in the service queue according to the original time of arrival. In addition to lower fuel costs and a smaller environmental footprint, Virtual Arrival provides better tools for more reliable vessel scheduling at port. Some of the Finnish Virtual Arrival pioneers include Neste and ELS Shipping, which use the Virtual Arrival concept in some of their port calls. Fintraffic´s Vessel Traffic Services and Siili Solutions cooperate on the Maritime Traffic Notification Service NEMO with the goal of promoting the national expansion of the Virtual Arrival concept and producing common digital services to support port call planning.
Learn more:
United States Department of State: https://www.state.gov/launch-of-the-green-shipping-challenge-at-cop27/. See also https://greenshippingchallenge.org/
