In a world where we become easily perplexed by what is going on around us, we often turn to nature as a source of inspiration. In recent years, nature has motivated research on new computing paradigms, ultimately leading to the unique field that is ‘Nature-Inspired Computing (NIC)'.
NIC is a form of artificial intelligence, however, rather than recreating human reasoning, it is based on how the natural world organises itself. Despite being a relatively new discipline, NIC has already produced some groundbreaking research which is having a growing impact on the design and operation of industrial systems. One example is genetic algorithms, which mimic natural evolution to "evolve" designs and solutions that are "most fit" to a particular problem or situation.
Another example is swarm intelligence, which recreates the way flocks of birds or swarms of insects can act together to forage for food, defend themselves or transform their living environment. Swarms are capable of actions and decision-making far more powerful than any individual in the swarm can achieve or even comprehend. Swarm algorithms use many small and simple but intercommunicating moving parts to construct intricate solutions to complex problems.
But how can these concepts help the transport sector achieve 'Mission Zero’?
Increasing climate change effects and the need to meet 2030 carbon reduction targets raise significant challenges for industry and society.
With transport systems responsible for a significant 24% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and rising year on year at a faster rate than any other sector, the transportation sector poses a serious challenge in efforts to meet global carbon reduction targets. With an unparalleled energy basin, the North East of Scotland is transitioning from a hydrocarbon basin to a renewable basin. Despite the move, heavy reliance on freight transport to support the onshore and offshore supply chain remains.
The Net Zero Operations team at the National Subsea Centre (NSC) has been exploring how nature-inspired computing can help reduce carbon footprint by modelling transport as a natural system. With multiple moving parts including vehicles, people and goods, that as a collective can cause harmful effects such as congestion, pollution and emissions, transportation can be compared to that of a natural swarm, as outlined earlier.
The image below displays Nature Inspired optimisation algorithms used to optimise platform supply vessel operations for a multi-operator study based on the Central North Sea. This offshore vessel study was carried out by the NSC team in 2017 and involved collecting data from six energy operators in the Central North Sea and applied NIC to identify £100M worth of potential savings per annum through more intelligent routing and pooling of supply vessels.
Over the years, the NSC team has collaborated with haulage companies, offshore operators, logistics specialists and port authorities to create software systems that can help plan and manage complex freight logistic networks.
The following image unveils metaheuristics and data science used to identify potential groupage of food and drink haulage tasks in the Highlands, leading to higher value loads for hauliers. It is extracted from the HiPlan technical feasibility project undertaken by the NSC team with The Data Lab and funded by the Highland City Region Deal to investigate the question: ‘Can Food & Drink logistics in the Highlands benefit from an open logistics software platform with AI capability to match food producers’ demand to move goods to logistics providers’ capacity to supply?’ As a result, the team saw reductions of between 20% and 40% in fleet requirements for companies they have worked with.
When rolled out across the North Sea and adapted to similar offshore supply chains across the world, this nature-inspired tech has the potential to achieve significant reductions in emissions and, because it is software-based, can be deployed rapidly.
While this technology will not help alleviate all the climate change challenges faced by organisations within transport sector, it will most certainly help them leap that little bit closer to achieving a fully zero emission fleet by 2030 or even earlier!
Together, nature and technology can help us save the planet!
To discover more about how our Net Zero Operations is solving real-world problems where the solution can be significantly enhanced by automated and efficient resource allocation and monitoring, view our dedicated Net Zero Operations webpage.
