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New CII simulation tool promises neutral space for owners and charterers

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A new CII simulation tool developed by NAPA aims to create a neutral platform for owners and charterers to collaborate and optimise vessels’ CII performance.

Ossi Mettälä, Sales Manager, Shipping Solutions at NAPA spoke to Seatrade Maritime News at CMA Shipping 2023 ahead of the launch of the new CII tool, which has been developed in close co-operation with NAPA’s clients.

Using a vessel’s digital twin and historical performance and route data, NAPA’s software can predict the CII performance over a period of time, factoring in many variables including routes travelled, weather and loading conditions, installed energy efficiency measures, hull cleaning and weather routing.

Where a digital twin is not available for a particular ship, Mettälä said NAPA can draw on the over 55,000 digital twin models NAPA has on its fleet intelligence platform which can be tweaked with individual data to give a representative simulation.

“We combine the digital twin, the performance model, with the historical operational data and software so that we can look further into the future and, to give an example, say that even though a vessel’s CII rating is B for today… if nothing changes in operation, it might end up on the higher C levels, for example.”

That predicted shift in CII rating may spur a shipowner and charterer into action, said Mettälä, looking at interventions such as a hull cleaning or speed change to keep a vessel’s CII rating at an acceptable level.

With CII calculated on an annual basis, Mettälä said it is essential that companies are on top of their CII calculations from the start of the year, and that owners and charterers can share a common platform to address their shared responsibility.

“Let's say that the owner or charterer starts to monitor and calculate CII in June, July, September. For CII, you are helpless that late in the year, there is only so much you can do after a certain point in time.”

Despite handling a complex series of inputs, simplicity was key to the tool’s development as was a focus on user interface and user experience.

“Clients’ feedback and presence in the beta development process has been most useful. After all, it’s a tool for them, by us. We like to have feedback early on, and one aspect that we paid a lot of attention to is creating a tool that is easy to use, where you're going to get the necessary results fast. We often hear feedback from our users and clients that they already have enough on their plate and they cannot spend too much time on tweaking the minor details using overly complicated tools, because there is just no time,” said Mettälä.

NAPA said it hopes the new CII Simulator will be an important tool to help action CII clauses in charter party agreements, helping to avoid disputes and ensure contractual commitments are delivered by providing reliable analyses of a vessel’s performance.

Mettälä hopes to see the tool play a role in moving CII from a simple measuring task to one of actively lowering CO2 emissions in the industry to help tackle climate change and reach decarbonisation targets.