Decision-making methodology in environmentally-conditioned ship operations based on ETD–ETA windows of opportunity

This paper presents a methodology to support the decision-making process during the planning of ship operations. The methodology is designed with the aim of identifying and providing the operator with the best Estimated Time of Departure (ETD)-Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) window of opportunity to execute the journey/operation between two predefined locations. To achieve this purpose, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) stability criteria are exploited in the process to formulate an operational safety criterion based on fuzzy reasoning as a function of the METeorological and OCeanographic (METOC) and sailing conditions. This allows for the analysis of the set of Pareto routes computed by a weather routing systems relying on a multi-objective set-up. The proposed methodology is tested in an operational scenario in the Mediterranean Sea.