A framework for real-time monitoring of energy efficiency of marine vessels

Sea shipping is one of the most widespread transport modes. Therefore, the improvement of energy efficiency and further curbing of Carbon Dioxide emissions by marine vessels is important both economically and environmentally. During the sixty ninth Marine Environment Protection Committee session in April 2016, the International Maritime Organization approved mandatory requirements for ships to report their fuel consumption, which is the first of the three-phase approach to derive a standardized measure for energy efficiency tracking of marine vessels. Under the International Maritime Organization Data Collection System, emphasis has been placed on verification of the collected fuel consumption data so that vessels' energy efficiency could be benchmarked and improved. To optimize the operational efficiency of marine vessels, this paper proposes the Real-Time Energy Efficiency Operating Index and the framework to implement it. The proposed scheme can be used to verify fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission data reported by individual ships. It also provides an approach to automatically and remotely estimate the transport work in real time. The proposed architecture mainly relies on the Automated Identification System and a constructed vessel database. A proof of concept prototype is deployed that monitors the energy efficiency of vessels along the Singapore Strait. •We propose a real time indicator for energy efficiency of marine vessels.•A framework for the implementation of the indicator is formalized.•A refined model for real time Carbon Dioxide estimation and cargo mass estimation is proposed and validated.•An infrastructure and a data base are proposed to compute and store information in real time.•A proof of concept is provided for the whole framework on real data along the Singapore Strait.