5 minutes to save lives: AI tool predicts killer sea waves in advance

A new artificial intelligence (AI) aided tool has been developed that holds the potential to predict the emergence of rogue waves up to five minutes in advance.

Rogue waves are monster waves that rise well above regular ocean swells. They can appear suddenly and strike with devastating force. These unpredictable giants have taken the lives of several sailors and continue to pose a serious threat to mariners and offshore facilities.

This technique, developed by researchers at the University of Maryland, makes use of an artificial intelligence method known as a neural network. The study team includes researchers Thomas Breunung and Balakumar Balachandran.

Trained with massive rogue wave data

Rogue waves have been nightmares of sailors for centuries, which is why they’re also known as extreme storm waves. The waves are powerful enough to topple or even break a ship.

NOAA defines rogue waves as “greater than twice the size of surrounding waves.” These waves mostly occur in the open ocean and seas.

The researchers trained this neural network with massive amounts of data collected from floating devices (called buoys) — positioned near coastlines. Particularly, the dataset included 14 million readings, each lasting 30 minutes, recording wave heights from 172 buoys scattered near the coasts of the US and Pacific Islands.

It was particularly taught to “distinguish ocean waves that will be followed by rogue waves, from those that will not.” The network learned to recognize patterns that occurred before the advent of rogue waves.

To evaluate the tool’s abilities, the researchers employed a different set of 40,000 sea surface elevation measurements from the same buoys.

The results were impressive. “The authors found that their tool was able to correctly predict the emergence of 75% of rogue waves one minute into the future and 73% of rogue waves five minutes into the future,” the press release noted.

Vital for quick actions

Moreover, the researchers tested the tool on two completely new buoys that were not included in the training data. And, guess what? It still managed to predict rogue waves with high accuracy. This suggests that the tool will be able to predict them even in whole new oceanic areas.

This vital warning time could allow sailors to take evasive action, minimize damage, and save lives.

“The authors suggest that the tool could be used to issue advance warnings to ships and offshore platforms to enable those working on them to seek shelter, perform emergency shutdowns, or manoeuvre to minimise the impacts of approaching rogue waves,” the press release mentioned.

Up next, the team aims to further improve their tools. By adding data like water depth, wind speed, and wave location, the accuracy and warning time could be significantly improved. More enhancement of the model might even allow for predicting the height and exact timing of rogue waves. They have detailed this new tool in the journal Scientific Reports .

Rogue wave research is increasing to protect sailors’ lives. Last year, researchers at the University of Copenhagen employed artificial intelligence to create a mathematical equation for predicting them in the ocean.