How we’re supporting decarbonisation initiatives

The Blue Visby Consortium is made up of leading companies and organisations, collaborating to refine and test the Blue Visby Solution. 

The Blue Visby Solution (BVS) seeks to address the issue of ‘Sail Fast Then Wait’ by introducing a queuing system for ships bound to the same destination port by synchronising and optimising the ocean passages of a group of vessels, allocating optimised arrival times, and ensuring an arrival frequency at which the port can handle. 

As part of the consortium, the UKHO has contributed to the Blue Visby Solution by concepting the Blue Visby ‘Blue Box’ – a feature determining the start and end point of a BVS optimisation. By offering our marine geospatial data and expertise, we helped to develop a proof-of-concept methodology to understand how these ‘Blue Boxes’ could be identified and charted. This would enable a vessel to approach a port from any direction, rather than specifically having to plan a route through a specified ‘Blue Box’, reducing risk to crew and vessels.

Using our ports database, coastline data and information we hold on anchorages, we were able to create a 14 nautical mile ‘arc’ that vessels will pass over at the end of a voyage, minimising navigational impact and maximising optimisation potential. From this proof-of-concept, we are continuing to work with Blue Visby to take the next step and establish how these arcs can be drawn and displayed on navigational products and back-of-bridge software applications.