In the context of Work-Package 4 – Holistic Assessment and more specifically Task 4.2 – BlueBARGE alternatives and optimum design, project partner DANAOS, in coordination with Fundacion Valenciaport & National Technical University of Athens, has implemented a versatile web-enabled toolkit to asses and evaluate alternative barge designs. Designs were evaluated under different umbrellas use cases, integrating domain expert opinions on certain evaluation pillars corresponding to financial, technical and environmental indicators.
The evaluation campaign engaged a diverse group of stakeholders from ship owning companies and ports to class societies and design offices. The adopted methodology consolidated pre-calculated KPIs and user-defined weights within a multi-criteria optimization framework, subjectively expressing—based on expertise and perceived importance—the confidence of each stakeholder in the defined evaluation pillars for each barge. This allowed partners to asses jointly in a qualitative and quantitative manner alternative barge designs and promote the ideal in terms of efficiency, cost and environmental compliance under different scenarios.
The results led to the promotion of Design 1.2, a self-propelled concept using batteries, which can only be recharged ashore. It has a theoretical power output of 88.3 MW (energy capacity of 65.3 MWh) and an overall efficiency of 68.4%—the second highest among the designs.
The assessment toolkit can also be expanded to facilitate Task 4.3 – Advanced Assessment and Optimization Tool, by establishing automated feedback workflows between the design optimization process and the assessment methodology, continuously re-evaluating design adaptations, and triggering appropriate refinements to ensure compliance with the predefined criteria.