Maritime Engineering
ORFISA IKC has an open range of possibilities and experience related with the maritime engineering field, including numeric and physic modelling applications.
SEA CURRENTS AND SWELL FORECAST
Grupo IKC and the Catalonia Technical College Maritime Engineering Laboratory are working together to publicize a sea currents and swell forecast numeric modelling system.
This system, unlike other ones, allows a continuous modelling since it considers the time variable. The meteorological models work continuously “improving” their predictions by incorporating data measured on different weather stations. This way of forecasts obtaining is the one that is currently beginning to be used at the oceanography field and it will allow opening new markets since it increases the forecast reliability.
Its application fields are varied although they can be included in three basic ones: Regattas, Commercial Navigation and Prevention.
REGATTAS: The system can provide information about the sea currents and swell forecast for three days, with 97 % reliability. The information is updated every three hours and its update can be adjusted at the regatta beginning.
COMMERCIAL NAVIGATION. It would consist of providing worldwide current and wave predictions for a three day horizon. The System, capable of realizing predictions in any sea or ocean of the planet, allows any vessel with use of a communicating viewer, which will send its position, to have the current and wave prediction, for a circular area equivalent to three days of navigation with centre on its position, at its disposal every three hours.
PREVENTION. Another field that has had great development in the last years and that does not have a generalized application yet is the prediction of the evolution of different substance’s spillage into the marine environments. This is so due to the fact that the modelling or prediction of the performance of spillages requires a previous knowledge of the physical-chemical performance of the spilled element in the sea and a correct prediction of the currents in the area to be analyzed. The results obtained have a high grade of reliability only when all of this previous information is correct.
Having this Current Prediction System available together with the Spillage Evolution Model, by simply introducing the vessel’s cargo and its position, we obtain the crude oil’s evolution over several days. From the analysis of several hypotheses for the spillage location, we can obtain the most efficient response for minimizing the effects of, for example, an oil slick.
In case of having all of its coastline introduced in the System, a Government administration would be able to analyze, for example, the possible areas affected by an oil slick produced by all of the oil tankers that at each moment are navigating in the proximities of their coastlines. By the same means, navigation of potentially dangerous ships can be controlled on the basis of the ocean current predictions in order to avoid that accidental tanker spillage could affect areas of special biological or economic interest.
This System would also allow a better management of city’s submarine emissaries, location of industrial areas, location of fish farms, of the risks for navigation of small vessels…
In charge of the Project:
Mr. F. Hermosilla - Development and Engineering Area Consultant Engineer - Grupo IKC
Mr. Agustín Sánchez-Arcilla Conejo – Maritime Engineering Professor U.P.C. and Director of Maritime Engineering Laboratory.
Mr. Manolo Espino Infantes - Lecturer of the Department of Maritime Engineering, U.P.C |
