Calculating precise emission estimates requires precise data.

Precise emission estimates are key for your customers’ compliance, to inform their decarbonisation strategies, and setting accurate offsetting budgets.

Knowing the precise vessel, locations and dates isn’t always a given, though. On top of that, shipments might be delayed, or re-routed last minute to an adjacent port, or they might make additional stops en-route to their destination.

At Lune we want to make calculating emissions as seamless as possible, which is why we go above and beyond to be flexible, and work around the data you already have.

This is why at Lune we’ve developed a host of features to give you the most granular calculations even if your package gets lost at sea.

The new features

Today we’re launching 4 features to give you the most precise emission estimates, using the data you already have:

• Snap To Port: track vessels between the correct departure and arrival ports even if you don’t know the port codes
• Delay Control: track vessels even if they’re early or delayed
• Vessel Inference: identify your vessel using just carrier name and dates
• Scheduled Route: take into account scheduled stops when calculating ocean routes

Snap To Port

Even if you don’t have port codes available, we can still track your shipments between the correct ports.

In order to track a vessel with AIS data, we need the departure and arrival port codes. But what if you don’t know the port codes, and instead you have geo-coordinates, or perhaps you only know what cities your shipment is going from and to?

We have you covered.

1. Snap to the port closest to the provided coordinates

First, we search for the port closest to the coordinates you provided, and we check if your vessel was there at the provided dates.

Sometimes ports aren’t that simple though. Take Ningbo, or Rotterdam harbours: they both have 10–30 ports, each with its unique code, and the one closest to your coordinates might not be the one your vessel stopped at.

2. Snap to the port closest to the vessel

If we don’t immediately find your vessel, we check when the vessel was closest to your coordinates. If we find it – within given time and distance boundaries – we then snap to the port closest to the vessel and use that to track its route.

Delay Control

The vessel is scheduled to depart on May 23rd and will arrive on July 2nd. We wish.

If you operate in the ocean logistics sector you know that vessels are very often delayed (or early) and that carefully planned schedules crumble the minute the ship hits the waves.

If we want to be able to track your vessel’s route – to give you the most accurate emission estimates – we need to be able to account for vessels departing and arriving at times different than what expected.

With Delay Control, we account for a time buffer for both departure and arrival dates. If we don’t find your vessel at the specified location and time, we search within our time buffer, to see if it was at the location earlier or later than expected.

Vessel Inference

Knowing the precise vessel (its name, IMO, or MMSI) is like striking gold for estimating emissions. Not only we can then use the exact vessel’s emission factor (as published by EMSA), we can also track its route precisely. The granularity is as good as it gets.

But what happens if you don’t have vessel data? Or what if the shipment is in the future and you don’t know what vessel will be used by the carrier you booked with?

If it’s gold we’re looking for, let’s go on a treasure hunt.

Vessel inference in the future

As future shipments haven’t happened yet, we cannot rely on real AIS tracking data to infer vessels. Instead, we can use the carriers’ planned schedules to see what vessel is scheduled to run a given voyage.

For example, we have a shipment on CMA CGM from Valencia to Malta, September 9th to September 19th. Searching CMA CGM’s schedule, we can see that the Cape Cod, Kimberley and Maui vessels are scheduled to run that voyage around those dates.

Comparing the provided and scheduled dates – as well as other heuristics – we can infer that the shipment will likely happen on the CMA CGM Kimberley vessel.

Scheduled Route

Instead of considering point A to B only, we now take into account intermediate port calls when calculating routes.

There are times when tracking a vessel using AIS data isn’t achievable, for example when your shipment hasn’t happened yet.

In such cases, we used to fall back to calculating the route with our sea distance algorithm. Given the departure and arrival locations, we trace the most likely ocean route and calculate its length.

While this method is pretty accurate, we thought there was room for improvement. Using again carrier schedules, instead of calculating the distance between point A and point B, we take into account all intermediate stops a vessel is scheduled to make and calculate all individual segments, increasing the precision of the calculated route.

For example, if you’re shipping between Qingdao (China) and Singapore on a CMA CGM vessel, we take into account the stops in Busan, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Nansha, Shekou and finally Singapore.

Calculate accurate shipment emissions with Lune

Logistics data can be inaccurate, outdated, or simply not available.

With more accurate emission calculations, your customers can improve their compliance reporting, inform their decarbonisation strategies, and set accurate offsetting budgets.

We believe it’s our job to bridge these data gaps whenever possible, so that you can use whatever data you already have. Calculating the most accurate estimates? Leave that to us.

To learn more about how you can embed emission calculations into your product, request a demo today.