Amarcon and Observator will develop a helideck monitoring and forecasting system to improve the safety of helicopter landings and take-offs from a vessel.

Amarcon, a part of the ABB group and Observator Instruments, today announced that the companies will jointly develop a helideck monitoring and forecasting system.

The helideck monitoring and forecasting system will improve the flight and passenger safety during helicopter landings and take offs. The new system, which will fully integrate with Amarcon’s vessel advisory system OCTOPUS, monitors weather conditions and advises a vessel’s crew whether to proceed with an intended helicopter operation (go/no-go) or wait. The system’s analysis and recommendation is based in weather data from the past 20 minutes.

The advisory system allows the vessel crew to have insight in a safe time window for the heli-operation based on the OCTOPUS motion forecast. In this window the most optimal heading and maximum allowable motions can be selected to ensure a safe heli operation. This forecast is derived from the industry accepted and proven OCTOPUS technology which is installed on more than 300 vessels, and is based on forecasted weather predictions and the hydrodynamic properties of the vessel.

With the OCTOPUS forecasting functionality, the onboard crew will have a far more precise understanding of available weather windows for heli-operations for the coming hours and days. Therefore crew changes can be planned in a more safe and accurate way, because next to the actual and past weather conditions, the forecasted weather and vessel motions are also taken into account.

For several years now, Observator has been providing Helideck Monitoring Systems, compliant with CAP-437 helideck (and other international) standards.

About Amarcon
Amarcon, a fully owned subsidiary of ABB, provides monitoring and forecasting software solutions for performance and availability optimization of sea-going vessels, and is the leader in vessel motion prediction solutions. ABB acquired Amarcon in august 2012 in order to strengthen its long-term growth strategy in vessel information and control systems. Amarcon and ABB offer the widest portfolio of marine advisory and optimization systems to the maritime market.