EU Funded Project CLOUD-VAS Has Started

CLOUD-VAS aims to develop a time and cost efficient solution to help Oil & Gas companies to make informed decisions on which vessels are best to be allocated to multiple routes. It considers for the first time optimizing environmental impact and fuel emission as an explicit objective in the vessel allocation problem and help Maritime Industry to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. CLOUD-VAS project has started on the 01st of June 2015 and will end on the 1st of June 2017.

CLOUD-VAS is a Cloud-based Vessel Allocation Decision Support tool derived from the by oil charteringcompanies expressed need for an elementary, user friendly software solution that is accessible any place, any time. CLOUD-VAS helps Large Oil & Gas companies and Large Ship-owners make sharp decisions on which vessels to charter, saving enormously on chartering costs and fuel consumption equalizing lower CO2 emission.

The Vessel Allocation Problem (VAP) is a widely known managerial problem for transportation companies that are relying on maritime shipping for transporting liquid bulk like oils, gas, chemicals and containers/ other dry bulk. Current methods for Vessel Allocation are based on linear, nonlinear, integer, stochastic and global programming solvers proven to perform well but complicated are in use and not protected by user access rights packages which entails alteration of data by virtually anyone is possible often leading to significant time and monetary losses. The outcome of CLOUD-VAS will provide a flexible and affordable optimization platform that enables to significantly minimize operational costs and fuel consumption (thus GHG emissions). The current practice of VAP by oil and gas companies does not consider environmental impact and fuel emissions during the allocation phase as an explicit objective.

The project aim is to make CLOUD-VAS, the first Cloud Based Software as a Service (SaaS) and Vessel Allocation Decision Support System, which is designed to meet the above illustrated needs, ready to be commercialized for the targeted market: Large Oil & Gas, Tanker Pool and Large Ship owners who wish to optimize the vessel allocation to multiple routes. Initially CLOUD-VAS will be operated as a stand-alone SaaS.

CLOUD-VAS project will capitalize on the existing information to build robust, affordable and user friendly cloud-based optimization platform. Furthermore, due to its user-friendly design, CLOUD-VAS is executable in a much more efficient manner saving additional time and labor costs .PROMATECH is the coordinator of the project. The project has officially begun on the 1st of June 2015, while its final results are expected in June 2017.