Arctic Route Planning and Navigation Strategy: The Perspective of Ship Fuel Costs and Carbon Emissions

Abstract

Arctic navigation research will be more urgent as it is predicted that 4.7% of the shipping trade will be deployed in the Arctic region by 2030. This paper presents a multi-objective path optimization algorithm based on the field theory to investigate Arctic shipping route design and navigation strategies that take safety, economy and environmental protection as factors. The algorithm considers the ice conditions in Arctic waters throughout the year, the energy consumption of ships with different ice classes and carbon emissions. The sea environment is initially modeled using the potential field method, incorporating the ice condition field, fuel consumption, emission field and directional field. The navigable area is defined based on the ship navigability, and path optimization is conducted using the principle of gradient descent between the departure point and destination. The experimental results show that the cost of carbon emissions and fuel consumption varies for each class of ship on the planned path in different months. Therefore, by combining different classes of ships and months, we obtain an Arctic navigation strategy with a consideration of the best cost and environmental protection for each month. The path planning and navigation strategy decision method proposed in this paper can provide a reference for an Arctic route design, navigation month and vessel selection, which is beneficial to the sustainable development of Arctic shipping.