OOCL Vessels Contribute Quality Data towards a Safer Maritime Community
In recognizing OOCL’s dedicated contributions to submitting quality weather data towards promoting a safer maritime community, three of our vessels were honored by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) with the Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Gold Awards and special recognitions were also given to two of our vessels for making significant advances in improving the quality and quantity of marine climatological reports.
Of the five VOS Gold Awards handed out this year, OOCL Asia, OOCL Charleston, and OOCL Yokohama were recognized for their outstanding contributions where each vessel submitted more than 300 climatological reports to the HKO in 2012. The marine climatological data were used to help identify prevailing weather conditions at sea to improve weather forecast and warnings for the maritime community. According to the HKO, there are 54 vessels registered in the Hong Kong VOS Program this year and OOCL is a major supporter with 34 participating vessels.
In addition to the three VOS Gold Awards, both OOCL Long Beach and OOCL Yokohama were presented with special certificates of recognition for being the two Hong Kong-flagged vessels that have successfully adopted specialized equipment to improve the accuracy, quality and frequency in ship weather reporting.
OOCL Long Beach was the first Hong Kong–flagged VOS vessel recruited by the HKO in 2013 to be among the 336 of the 3,400 VOS participants worldwide to have installed a ship-borne Automatic Meteorological Observation System (AMOS) which allows OOCL Long Beach the ability to automatically take measurements and disseminate the data to meteorological centres through satellites around the world.
In addition to reducing the workload from having to manually enter the climatological data, the AMOS helps minimize errors in the coding and transmitting of such data and can also be transmitted on an hourly basis, which is a significant improvement on the reporting frequency when compared to manual transmissions on a 6-hour interval.
In recognizing the OOCL Yokohama, it was the first Hong Kong-flagged VOS vessel upgraded in 2013 with the VOS Climate (VOSClim) equipment. It consists of certified meteorological instruments to facilitate weather observations and record the data in an electronic logbook where the data can be transmitted in a more timely and efficient manner. The VOSClim has a proven record of providing high quality observations which can greatly enhance operational forecast and global climate studies.
(L-R) Mr. W Zhou, Assistant General Manager for Fleet Management of OOCL received the honors from
Mr. Sun Chi-Ming, FRMetS, JP, Director of the Hong Kong Observatory
At the awards presentation ceremony held on May 28, 2013, OOCL’s Assistant General Manager for Fleet Management, Mr W Zhou, proudly received the honors from the Director of the HKO, Mr. Sun Chi-Ming, FRMetS, JP, recognizing OOCL’s effort and contributions to improve weather forecast and warnings towards a safer environment for ocean-going vessels and the public.
