route planner

Alternative Routing for the Vendée Globe starting

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The 2012 Vendée Globe Race starts today and racers are already counting on their marine navigation software to find the best possible route according to weather forecasts and some other important factors.

We’ve launched our Routing Module in order to see what’s the best option at the start of the race and this is what we’ve obtained:

Route 1 - Vendée Globe Race

In the image, we can see that at 10am on the 12th, there will be poor wind, which is bad news for the 20 skippers…so we’ve decided to relaunch it using the Alternative Routing feature to see if there could be another more accurate route surrounding that area:

Alternative route feature launch - Vendée Globe Race

Route 2 - Vendée Globe Race

What we’ve got, is a route that goes further in the Ocean, avoiding the Spanish Coast as compared to the previous one:

Route 1 vs Route 2 - Vendée Globe Race

Here’s a reenactment of this second alternative route for the Vendée Globe racers:

We’ll see which one is taken by the skilled sailors…Good winds for all of them!

The added value of 3D display in the Costa Concordia case

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In order to analyze more in detail Giglio Area and Costa Concordia capsizing, we have decided to locate Costa Concordia with a real size scalable icon.

As you can see below, the Costa Concordia ship is too big to navigate in such a narrow place.

Even if we’re still not certain about the exact point of impact at the moment, it’s likely that it was close to Isole le Scole:

Costa Concordia ship in 2D (C-MAP by Jeppesen chart)

Here is a 2D display of the most probable impact zone. In 2D mode, we understand that this place is definitely made of shallow and rocky waters:

Probable impact area for the Costa Concordia ship in 2D (C-MAP by Jeppesen chart)

Probable impact area Costa Concordia 2D (C-MAP by Jeppesen chart)

3D mode brings added value to the chart information. It allows us to easily display and understand the prompt depth change. Let’s see the ship again in 3D:

Costa Concordia ship in 3D (C-MAP by Jeppesen)

And now, the depth of the potential impact area:

Probable impact area Costa Concordia 3D (C-MAP by Jeppesen)

Combined, 2D and 3D display modes give a better, more accurate and safer way to plan a route and avoid dangerous spots.