A Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system guides
navigation of a vessel enabled to extract energy from wind and/or water
currents primarily in offshore marine environments. An exemplary SCADA
system could embody server and client software applications running on
microprocessor systems at a remote control central service logging and
energy distribution facility, and the vessel itself. The remote control
service facility runs Human Machine Interface (HMI) software in the form
of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) allowing choices to maximize system
performance. The central server accesses information to control vessel
position based on transmitted Global Position Satellite (GPS) data from
the vessel, and weather information from the Geographic Information
System (GIS) provided by multiple spatial temporal data sources. A
server-side optimization algorithm fed the parameters delivered from
vessel aerodynamic/hydrodynamic performance simulation software models,
the vessel onboard sensor data, and integrated real-time weather and
environmental data determines an optimal navigation through weather
systems and presents choices to the HMI.