How does Route Planning work?

For the maritime industry, route planning is the process of planning which route a ship can take that would be the most efficient. Efficiency can either be in terms of fuel consumption or in terms of speed. Route planning is also in line with route optimization. In the maritime industry, it is expected that cargo gets to the right place at the right time. Companies and people around the globe rely on precise predictions of when a vessel will arrive with a shipment of goods and services, and route planning is a part of this precise prediction.

Route planning is complicated, as many features must be taken into consideration in order to plan the best route. There are always multiple routes available. An example of a feature is weather. Route planning must consider effects of weather on the vessel speed, and weather is constantly changing. Regarding route planning, captains choose a trajectory as a car driver must choose a highway. As there are different highways on the sea (maritime lanes), the highway chosen by the captain will not result in the same distance to the port or the same weather along the way. The choice of the route will thus have a significant impact on the planned route.