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Flexible Tool Environment for Holistic Retrofits and Decarbonization of Ships

Project description

AI for smarter ship retrofits

Retrofitting existing ships is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as most vessels will remain in service for decades. However, current design tools cannot efficiently identify the best combination of retrofit technologies for individual ships, limiting progress towards climate goals. The EU-funded FIT-HORIZONS will develop an AI-powered design tool that helps ship owners and designers identify the most effective and cost-efficient retrofit solutions for different types of vessels. By combining operational data, advanced machine learning, lifecycle and regulatory assessments, and virtual demonstrations, the project will enable faster, more informed retrofit decisions, supporting the decarbonisation of Europe’s maritime fleet.

Objective

The FIT-HORIZONS project aims to develop an intelligent tool for the design of retrofit solutions for waterborne vessels that will be able to analyse a multitude of different retrofit technologies and their combinations in a holistic manner. This is urgently needed to reduce Green House Gas emissions from the maritime fleet and meet the EU’s ambitious climate ambitions as waterborne vessels have an expected lifetime of between 25-50 years. However, today’s design tools are evaluating each retrofit technology independently and they cannot analyse the total retrofit design space within reasonable time, which means that ship owners cannot be sure that the retrofit solutions are the best for a given vessel. FIT-HORIZONS aims to solve this by using a machine learning-based multi-fidelity approach and combining operational and experimental data series, advanced AI models, and advanced dimensionality techniques to build surrogate models that will then be used to construct 6 synthesis models representing each of the 6 ship types defined by the ZEWT Partnership. Moreover, a cost-benefit model will be integrated with the synthesis models to consider regulatory compliance and LCA metrics across the vessels’ lifetime. Together, this will allow for a flexible and efficient design process in which multiple combinations of retrofit technologies can be analysed at the same time to identify optimal retrofit solutions for a given vessel. Finally, virtual demonstrations will be carried out where ship designers will collaborate with ship owners to design 6 optimised retrofit solutions for vessels from each of the 6 ship types that will be ready to be adopted onboard the vessels after the project ends. The FIT-HORIZONS consortium is composed of 14 companies with industrial/commercial interest in the project results (3 ship designers, 6 ship operators, 2 retrofit technology developers, 2 software developers, and 1 classification society), 4 research organisations, and 1 maritime cluster.

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Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL5-2025-04

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Coordinator

SINTEF OCEAN AS
Net EU contribution
€ 1 062 050,00
Address
PROFESSOR J.H.L. VOGTS VEG 1A
7052 TRONDHEIM
Norway
Region
Norge Trøndelag Trøndelag
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost
No data

Participants (18)