Shore-based Voyage Planning

The objective of the thesis was to describe the voyage planning process and factors that influence it to see how the process could be adapted for being performed shoreside. The thesis is a qualitative study written from the voyage planning officer’s point of view concentrating on the appraisal and planning stages. Regulatory framework was defined using IMO and British Admiralty publications. Carnival Corporation’s SMS policies and Holland America Line’s voyage planning routines were used as examples of the process. As there is not much research available on voyage planning and new developing technologies, interviews and internet sources were used. The amount of work put into a voyage plan varies greatly depending on a ship type and trade area, but generally it is a time-consuming process, partly because the information needs to be gathered from multiple sources and is not always easily available. The concept of e-navigation is aimed to improve connectivity between different systems and stakeholders allowing new types of services and information dissemination across the industry enabling the navigators to receive relevant information in time and often automatically with no need to request the information separately. Also automated ship-to-ship information exchange will become possible. AI-aided planning software and government provided passage plans can be of assistance in the voyage planning officer’s work, but their scope is still quite limited. In the future when the technology develops, and especially if all information can be accessed from a single window, time spent on appraisal and planning stages will decrease considerably and most of the process could be done shoreside leaving the officers on board more time for other tasks. Autonomous vessels and augmented reality are the future, and as the technology develops shore-based voyage planning will become more common