What's Actually Under The Hood.
The engineering behind ABB Ability™ SPOS: a weighted multi-model marine forecast, MARIN-developed hydrodynamic ship profiles, a route network built from decades of real passages, and a variable-speed optimisation algorithm — plus the parts nobody puts in a brochure. The onboard IT footprint, the licensing model, the onboarding steps that decide whether a rollout sticks, and every route your SPOS data can take into your own systems.
Written for the people who have to make it work
Superintendents, fleet performance managers, IT and integration teams. We've written this from ABB's own published material so you can evaluate ABB Ability™ SPOS properly rather than from a sell sheet — including the constraints. SepcoTech is a partner for SPOS and handles licensing, onboarding and first-line support. For the business case and the savings picture, see the SPOS overview page.
Not one model — a weighted blend, then a human
The most common question a technical buyer asks is "why is your forecast better?" The honest answer is that it isn't one forecast. It's a blend that has been tuned since 1986.
Multi-model, lead-time weighted
ABB blends the major global models — ECMWF, UK Met Office and NCEP/NOAA — plus regional models and ECMWF's ensemble for uncertainty. The weights shift with forecast lead time, so the model that performs best at 24 hours isn't necessarily the one weighted highest at 120 hours.
Near-shore waves & self-learning calibration
A near-shore post-processing module refines wave behaviour where the global wave model's resolution is too coarse, and a Kalman filter provides self-learning local calibration against real observations. High-resolution wave runs are available for specific locations on request.
Meteorologists in the loop
ABB's own meteorologists manually adjust the output using observations, satellite and radar. Behind the product sits a 24/7 weather room for ship emergencies outside office hours.
Resolution, refresh and what actually gets sent
A global grid with fine-mesh resolution over high-traffic areas, refreshed four times a day, delivered to the vessel by email or HTTP with an area subscription so you only pay to move the data you need.
- Over 20 parameters feed the optimisation — including salinity for ballasting, and humidity and dew point for cargo ventilation
- Derived nautical elements including risk wind speed and risk wave height (confidence ceilings) — directly useful in charter-party and safety-limit conversations
- Ice shown in colour-coded concentration levels and settable as a hard restriction; North Atlantic outer iceberg limit displayed
- Predefined restriction sets — SECA/ECA, ice, Antarctic iceberg limit, war and piracy zones, load lines
- Custom user-drawn restriction areas, lines and circles on top
Physics, not pattern-matching
A forecast is only half of it. The other half is knowing what that sea state does to this hull, and which tracks are actually sailable.
Developed with MARIN
Pre-built hydrodynamic models by vessel type, developed with MARIN — the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands — holding wind and wave resistance algorithms. This removes the biggest onboarding blocker in voyage optimisation: nobody has to hand over a proprietary speed/power curve to get value on day one. ABB calls it out as especially relevant for chartered tonnage, where the operator often doesn't hold the model at all.
Bring them if you have them
Customers with their own performance models can supply them instead — vessel-specific speed-loss model, speed–fuel–RPM–MCR curve, and auxiliary and boiler fuel curves. Both routes are supported; you're not forced into either.
Built from thousands of real passages
A curated library accumulated over decades, covering practical port-to-port routes, canals, traffic separation schemes and ECAs, with navigational constraints and port approaches baked in. The design decision that matters: in shallow and constrained water the algorithm follows the network for safety; in open water it optimises freely. That's what stops the output being a great-circle through a shoal.
Speed varies along the track
ABB describes this as the industry's first variable-speed algorithm. It calculates the optimum route while varying speed, respecting bad weather, ECA transits, RPM and speed ranges, and fixed ETAs — combined with voyage trim optimisation for further consumption reduction.
Forecast motions as a routing constraint
The optional Seakeeping module turns predicted vessel response into something the optimiser routes around — the capability that makes SPOS genuinely hard to replace on motion-sensitive trades.
What you configure, and what it checks
Set-up is deliberately light — vessel type, dimensions, draft and loading condition, or a direct connection to your digital loading files for exact input. From there you define what "too much" means for your ship and your cargo.
- Threshold values for any translation or rotation — vertical and horizontal displacement, degrees, accelerations, and seasickness indices
- Virtual sensors defined at any point on the vessel or its cargo, and combinable into composite limits
- Automatic checks for IMO parametric roll, synchronous roll, broaching and high-wave resonance
- Polar diagram and time-series charts showing exactly where and when thresholds would be breached
- Risk zones drawn on the map and animated forward in time
- With a GPS feed: real-time motion data plus course and speed guidance to escape a developing motion event
- Compatible with ABB Ability™ OCTOPUS — Marine Advisory System for the combined predicted-and-measured picture
ABB reports up to a further 1.5% fuel saving from Seakeeping, alongside reduced container loss and the ability to load more cargo. Seakeeping and SPS2GRIB are paid add-on modules, not part of base SPOS.
What your IT department will ask
SPOS is a Windows desktop application, not a hosted platform. That's the point — but it means there are real answers to give about install, patching, data and comms.
Install, prerequisites and patching
- Windows desktop application, installed from a download link on a bridge or ship's-office PC
- Requires administrator rights to install; any user can then run it
- Microsoft Installer and .NET Framework prerequisites are installed automatically if absent
- Install needs a registration key, the licensed vessel name and the shipping company name — it takes minutes
- Modest hardware requirements: it is designed to run on old, low-spec bridge PCs, which is a genuine operational advantage
- Patches distributed by HTTP, or delivered in chunks by email for mail-only vessels and reassembled with the weather update; patches install manually with admin rights
We confirm the current ABB-supported operating-system matrix for your fleet in writing during scoping. Legacy published minimums are far older than anything a modern IT department will accept, and we won't quote them at you.
Communications
- Weather delivered by email or HTTP(S), up to 4× daily
- Area subscription — you transmit only the sea areas you sail
- Internet-based delivery is preferred over satcom-billed channels, by design and by contract
- The customer arranges and pays for communications to its own vessels
- ABB's sending domain must be whitelisted on the vessel's mail system — this is the single most common cause of "it doesn't work" tickets
Data & retention
- All optimisation is computed locally, on the vessel
- SPOS data and generated assets are retained for a maximum of about 12 hours from creation unless documented otherwise
- After that they may be archived or deleted — this surprises people, so plan for it
- Long-term voyage records are a Fleetguard / Vessel Insights API requirement, not a SPOS one
- Configurable noon reporting, routed to ABB or saved locally, feeding Fleetguard
The eight steps that decide whether it sticks
Weather-routing rollouts rarely fail on the software. They fail on an unregistered end user, a mail gateway that silently drops the forecast, or a Master who was never briefed. This is the checklist we run with you.
Getting SPOS data into your stack
If you already run a performance platform, the answer isn't to replace it. There are three routes out of SPOS and one route that bypasses the onboard client entirely.
Forecasts into other bridge systems
A small add-on module that exports the SPOS forecast in GRIB format so it can be displayed in ECDIS and other onboard software. Disproportionately useful for closing out integration objections on the bridge.
Shore-side platform & MRV
SPOS reports into ABB Ability™ Fleetguard, the browser-based shore platform for fleet monitoring, weather layers, alerting, performance analysis, post-voyage analysis reports and EU MRV reporting in government-approved format. If shore needs the same picture as the bridge, this is the piece — SPOS alone does not provide it.
Routing, insights and forecasting as a service
For teams that would rather feed their own platform than adopt another interface, ABB offers a Vessel Routing API, a Vessel Insights API and a Marine Forecasting Engine API. These are a separate SKU from SPOS, and they're the right answer to "we already have a performance platform" — don't fight it, feed it.
The Vessel Routing API, in outline
Weather-optimised routing delivered over secure, scalable infrastructure as a REST endpoint — an engine you call, rather than a system you run. Useful when the customer's own voyage planner, chartering estimator or compliance pipeline should be the interface.
You provide
- Start, destination, intermediate stops & ETD/ETA
- Vessel particulars & performance model
- Fixed speed or speed range; time & bunker costs (ECA / non-ECA)
- Cargo details, custom no-go and speed-limit areas
- UKC, air draft & safety margins; Warn / Avoid weather limits
The API returns
- JSON route with hard/soft waypoints & ECA entry/exit points
- Per-leg summary: MCR, RPM, set speed, SOG, STW, distance, weather
- Route summary: consumption, emissions, cost, CII, average SOG
- ETA at destination & stops — in UTC and local time
- Warnings: depth, weather-limit and air-draft alerts
// Illustrative structure of a route response — fields per ABB's published model { "optimizedFor": "total_cost", "endpoint": "optimal_set_speed", "summary": { "distance_nm": 3480, "avg_sog_kn": 13.2, "fuel_mt": 612.4, "emissions_co2_mt": 1905.6, "cost_usd": 498200, "cii": "C" }, "eta": { "utc": "2026-07-04T09:20Z", "local": "2026-07-04T11:20+02:00" }, "waypoints": [ { "lat": 41.36, "lon": 2.19, "type": "hard" }, /* … */ ], "eca": [ { "entry": "…", "exit": "…" } ], "legs": [ { "mcr_pct": 62, "rpm": 78, "set_speed_kn": 13.5, "sog_kn": 13.1, "stw_kn": 13.4, "weather": "…" } ], "warnings": [ "air_draft_margin_low@WP14" ] }
| Routing endpoint | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shortest Path | Minimum-distance navigable track between two points at sea — the baseline every other endpoint improves on. |
| Instructed set speed | Weather-optimised routing at a fixed charter-party speed / RPM / MCR. |
| Recommended set speed | The single best fixed speed selected from a permitted range. |
| Optimal set speed | Speed varies along the route to minimise total fuel or total cost, with a configurable minimum interval between speed changes (24–72 h) to keep the plan operationally realistic. |
| Fixed ETA | Hit a required arrival time at lowest fuel or cost — for berth windows and laycans. |
Each endpoint can be optimised against time, fuel (tonnes), fuel cost (ECA / non-ECA aware) or total cost. Warn/Avoid thresholds cover distance to hurricanes and tropical storms, maximum wind and significant wave height, icing risk, visibility, water depth and UKC, and air draft — alongside custom no-go and speed-limit areas and automatic vessel, cargo and regulatory restrictions.
ABB references: Routing Services · Routing Services API developer portal
Who consumes the output
Whether it arrives as a noon report into Fleetguard, a GRIB into ECDIS or JSON into your own platform, one route calculation can feed several teams at once.
One calculation, many consumers
A single optimised route carries everything downstream systems need — track and waypoints, per-leg performance, ETAs in UTC and local time, consumption, emissions and carbon intensity — so the bridge, the performance team, the chartering desk and the compliance pipeline can all work from the same voyage rather than three reconciliations of it.
Technical & Onboarding — FAQ
What does ABB Ability™ SPOS run on?
How is it licensed?
How does the vessel receive the weather?
How long is SPOS data kept?
Can we integrate SPOS data with our own platform?
Is Optimal Speed Routing part of SPOS?
Is SPOS an ECDIS or a passage-planning system of record?
Who supports us — SepcoTech or ABB?
Evaluating it properly? Let's talk
Tell us about your fleet, your bridge IT and the systems you'd want SPOS data to reach, and we'll put together licensing, onboarding and integration support.
ABB Ability™, SPOS, Routeguard, Fleetguard and OCTOPUS are trademarks of ABB. ABB Ability™ SPOS is a decision-support tool and not a navigation system. Routes calculated by SPOS give a general indication of tracks to sail and are not checked for navigational hazards. The Master of each vessel remains responsible for safe navigation at all times and must verify routes against approved, up-to-date charts before sailing, and ensure adequate up-to-date ENC coverage at all compilation scales. Fuel-saving figures are as published by ABB and vary by vessel type, season and operating conditions; they are not a guarantee of results. Technical details, licensing terms, module availability and supported operating systems described here are drawn from ABB's published material and are confirmed per fleet at the time of quotation. The API response shown is an illustrative structure, not ABB documentation.