User-sourced geo- referenced Meteo-marine measures gathered from common on-board sensors for marine nowcasts and forecasts

Meteo-marine conditions and events strongly influence maritime commercial and leisure activities, as well as the health status of the environment. Many recent events provide a clear picture of the dramatic impact in terms of safety of people and safeguard of the marine environment that a missing or wrong interpretation of meteo-marine conditions can cause. Meteo-marine conditions are important not only for the safety of navigation but also for the economics of commercial activities that are exercised on the sea. A study carried out by Corsica Ferries company, shows that, the impact of meteo-marine factors (wind, waves, currents) can be quantified as around 14% of the overall energy (i.e. fuel) consumption. The reduction, through the provision of specific commercial weather routing services, of the impact of meteomarine conditions on navigation safety, in terms of prevention of sea accidents (with associated costs) and on fuel consumption (with associated environmental benefits) constitutes the contest of Profumo services. Profumo proposed a collaborative model: end-users cooperate to the Profumo services providing their own geo- referenced Meteo-marine measures gathered from common on-board sensors. Weather models can produce good nowcasts and forecasts only if “fed” with a good and large amount of actual measured data. On seas meteorological stations are extremely sparse: Profumo used vessels as moving meteorological stations, which continuously provide this precious information. The meteorological data from vessels are not-certified, unusable as-is in the models. Therefore, a specific data processing technique merges and extracts proper information as input for the high resolution weather models.