The Influence of Weather and Ice on Ferry Operations: Modelling Present-Day Effects to Predict Future Trends

Ferry performance can be greatly influenced by environmental factors. Adverse weather and ice conditions can severely restrict the ability to conduct operations in a safe, efficient, and financially viable manner. Furthermore,... [ view full abstract ]

Ferry performance can be greatly influenced by environmental factors. Adverse weather and ice conditions can severely restrict the ability to conduct operations in a safe, efficient, and financially viable manner. Furthermore, as regional conditions vary due to climate change influences, the effects may become more severe. To better understand how specific weather and ice factors influence ferry operations, a statistical analysis was conducted using a case study of historical Marine Atlantic traffic between North Sydney, NS and Port Aux Basques, NL. A machine learning model was developed to predict ferry sailing cancellations and delays, using selected environmental factors as inputs (obtained from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information). This provides insight into the frequency of certain environmental hazard combinations, how these are related to decisions on crossing cancellations or delays, and how consistent the decision-making process is. The constructed model is then used to ingest future environmental conditions in the area derived from a well-known climate change model (the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 –  CMIP5). Over the coming decades, the results show that: (1) environmental factors are good predictors of cancellations and poor predictors of delays; (2) wind speed is the most important environmental factor for cancellation prediction, and air temperature the most important for delay prediction; and (3) that the ratio of cancelled sailings to total sailings is projected to increase over the next three decades. Such predictions can help anticipate the effects of climate change on the ferry service reliability and the associated business consequences.