A Visibility Risk-Assessment Tool for Maritime Operations

Fog and smog reduce visibility at sea, greatly impacting ship navigation and safety. Low visibility marine conditions decrease speed and safety of commercial fleets and increase costs through poor fuel load planning. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of maritime operations to the supply chain; therefore, decreasing associated cost and risk are of the utmost importance. Applied Ocean Sciences, LLC proposes to create a visibility risk-assessment tool for maritime operations. Such a tool will consider meteorologic, oceanographic, and bathymetric conditions with safety thresholds to create discretized spatial risk maps. Ensemble models of environmental data feed into the risk-assessment codes. Safety thresholds will be created for three types of maritime traffic navigation: harbor operations; small support boat operations, including Search and Rescue; and recreational watercraft. Risk assessment performance will be evaluated against visibility observations to determine proper tuning of these thresholds. Phase I will focus on maritime operations in the Gulf of Mexico, with plans to expand the spatial domain in future phases. The products resulting from this line of R&D will be web based risk maps available via a subscription service. In addition to maps, resultant risk assessment data will be accessible in multiple formats tailored to meet user demand.