Tide and current data will be available to users of DNV GL’s Veracity web service after Hobart-Australia-based metocean data specialist Tidetech joined Veracity.
Tidetech will make its metocean data available to Veracity users as data or via an API, enabling shipowners and managers to optimise their fleet operations, save fuel and increase vessel efficiency. Tidetech is the only provider high resolution forecast modelling of coastal tides and currents, including in critical locations such as the Malacca Strait and English Channel where there is a significant influence of tidal currents. 
Tidetech's data is made available to customers daily and when integrated into navigation and passage planning processes, can have a positive impact not just in reduced fuel consumption and emissions but also in voyage time. The numerical models Tidetech constructs to forecast tidal elevations, currents, storm and tide surges draw on the skills of former UK Government researchers who were the brains behind the world’s first operational tide-surge model.
- “Tidetech produces models of tides and currents and supplies best scientific quality meteorological and oceanographic data for the commercial shipping industry, delivered via enterprise grade systems and APIs,” said Tidetech Managing Director Penny Haire. “Our customers say that Tidetech provides a service where all their meteorological and oceanographic data needs can be met, in terms of product range, quality and reliability.”
- A combination of pending regulation and the need for better performance on existing vessels, pushed along by better communications means that the demand for detailed and accurate weather data has grown strongly in recent years but many new ‘weather routeing’ providers are providing only a limited service.
- “Weather can have a big effect on vessel performance but often the total benefit that can be derived from this data is not always understood, thanks to the misconception that weather services only have a benefit when sailing in blue water,” added Haire. “From simulations run for shipowners on their routes, we have proven definitively that on the North Atlantic there are more potential cost savings from optimising against currents in UK coastal and Northern European waters than there are across the whole Atlantic.”
- Tidetech has strong expertise in the scientific assessment of third party meteorological and oceanographic datasets and routinely accesses a wide range of carefully selected products from government and academic sources worldwide for inclusion into its catalogue. All Tidetech products are curated on its custom, data platform specially designed to host large scale, complex meteorological and oceanographic datasets.
- The Tidetech catalogue includes forecast and hindcast (historical) data for wind, waves and currents, with multiple parameters available.
- Global data is available for all parameters and regional high-resolution data is available for most.
- Data services include APIs that provide end points for gridded data (NetCDF and GRIBs) and point data (individual locations). It also provides a WMTS (Web Map Tile Service) that delivers images for data visualisation purposes.
