PortWeather: A Lightweight Onboard Solution for Real-Time Weather Prediction.

Petros Karvelis,Chrysostomos Stylios,Daniele Mazzei,Matteo Biviano

doi:10.3390/s20113181

Abstract

Maritime journeys significantly depend on weather conditions, and so meteorology has always had a key role in maritime businesses. Nowadays, the new era of innovative machine learning approaches along with the availability of a wide range of sensors and microcontrollers creates increasing perspectives for providing on-board reliable short-range forecasting of main meteorological variables. The main goal of this study is to propose a lightweight on-board solution for real-time weather prediction. The system is composed of a commercial weather station integrated with an industrial IOT-edge data processing module that computes the wind direction and speed forecasts without the need of an Internet connection. A regression machine learning algorithm was chosen so as to require the smallest amount of resources (memory, CPU) and be able to run in a microcontroller. The algorithm has been designed and coded following specific conditions and specifications. The system has been tested on real weather data gathered from static weather stations and onboard during a test trip. The efficiency of the system has been proven through various error metrics.

Highlights

Meteorology is the study of weather events, having a significant focus on the forecasting of principal weather variables
This study presents an onboard weather prediction IOT system that provides short-term forecasts of wind speed and direction, without the need of an internet connection
The PortWeather system is composed of a commercial weather station interfaced with an Industrial IOT acquisition unit

Summary

Introduction

Meteorology is the study of weather events, having a significant focus on the forecasting of principal weather variables. There is great importance in quantifying meteorological variables such as temperature, humidity, air pressure, and wind flow; their variations and interactions and how they change over time. For this reason, various spatial scales have been proposed in order to describe and predict weather conditions on local, regional, or global levels [2,3]. Weather conditions have had a significant effect on sea-transportation and all the maritime affairs over time [4]. All are related and interconnected and seem to belong to a vicious circle that impact the quality of the environment and the maritime meteorological conditions [5,6]. International Maritime Organization (IMO) [7] and the World Meteorological

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Conclusion