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Applied Weather Technology, Inc. (AWT), has today announced the worldwide launch of GlobalView, an innovative new fleet management system that combines AWT's ship routing services and software with Google Earth technology to give fleet managers a visual, easy-to-use and powerful system for reducing fuel consumption and curbing carbon emissions and enhancing safety.

"We believe GlobalView to be the first fleet management system to utilize Google Earth technology—this brings a significant innovation to ship routing technology," said Skip Vaccarello, president and CEO for AWT.

"What's innovative about GlobalView is that it delivers the data fleet managers need in an extraordinarily visual, easy to use and dynamic way," explained Vaccarello.

"With Google Earth, GlobalView makes it much easier for fleet managers to protect vessels and crew and identify more opportunities to reduce fuel consumption and curb carbon emissions."

GlobalView Versus Typical Ship Routing Technology

Unlike typical fleet management products that require fleet managers to access and analyze massive amounts of data from disparate systems, GlobalView is said to literally give fleet managers a "global view" of the locations of their companies' vessels and make it easy to access important weather and ship-routing data about their current voyages.

"Fleet managers can see in an instant, all in one place, information that could have otherwise taken hours to gather from many sources," AWT said.

Vessels appear on the globe as color-coded icons that can be customized to provide fleet managers with alerts regarding ship performance, fuel consumption/carbon emissions, weather conditions, ETAs or other factors. A click on the vessel icon gives a summary of the current voyage and sea state.

"We designed GlobalView because we listened to our customers," said Richard Brown, vice president of product management at AWT. "What makes GlobalView unique is that it was developed with Google's API technology, which adds a layer on top of Google Earth so that fleet managers can easily manipulate the data."

Reducing Fuel Consumption and CO2 Emissions

With one glance at GlobalView, fleet managers can identify which ships have alerts warning of excessive fuel consumption. Fleet managers can also view opportunities to reduce vessels' fuel consumption and carbon emissions with AWT's recommended routes. They can see Captains' intended routes and quickly compare them to routes being recommended by AWT for optimal safety, fuel savings and carbon emissions reductions. Alerts can help fleet managers to proactively work with Captains during voyages to take advantage of more fuel-efficient routes.

AWT estimates its routing services and BonVoyage (BVS) marine voyage optimization software save the shipping industry approximately 365,000 metric tonnes (mt) of fuel annually. This translates to potential cost savings of more than $166 million USD per year and a reduction of 1,162,000 MT in CO2 emissions, the equivalent of removing 258,000 cars from the road.

Averting Severe Weather and Ocean Conditions

With GlobalView, fleet managers can see where severe weather and ocean conditions are occurring relative to vessels' locations, including a new display of potential rogue wave areas, and also view weather forecasts.

"While many competitors take raw forecast data from governmental agencies and repackage it for customers, AWT continuously enhances the wind forecast around tropical cyclones, monsoon areas, and other high-risk areas where conventional model data performs poorly. Then AWT runs a proprietary WaveWatch III wave model to provide the best short- and medium-range forecast available. When these features are combined with long-range vessel simulation from AWT's proprietary Climatological Ship Resistance model, ETA projections improve by approximately eight percent compared to using conventional climatological weather," AWT said.

Avoiding Regions Known for Pirate Activity

GlobalView also provides historical pirate attack data so that the information is readily available to fleet managers. With GlobalView, fleet managers can easily access information about pirate activity showing all the regions where their vessels are traveling.

GlobalView shows details about actual and attempted pirate attacks, as well as suspicious vessel data, with time and location details. Fleet managers can filter the data by attack type and are provided color coded icons to easily identify where attacks have occurred. The data empowers fleet managers to work together with Captains and AWT to help ships avoid regions known for pirate activity and identify optimal alternative routes.