MUTE-DSS: A digital-twin-based decision support system for minimizing underwater radiated noise in ship voyage planning

• Digital twin system for mitigating ship noise during voyage planning. • Integrated near-field and far-field 3D acoustic propagation modelling. • Two-stage voyage optimization for route planning and speed adjustment. • Real-time tracking and assessment of marine mammal noise exposure. • Validated using AIS data in realistic case study scenarios. We present a novel MUTE-DSS, a digital-twin-based decision support system for minimizing underwater radiated noise (URN) during ship voyage planning. The system is built on the Robot Operating System (ROS2), an open-source middleware framework designed for modular, distributed, and real-time communication between software components. The framework integrates near-field acoustic modeling using a semi-empirical spectrum with 3D ray tracing for far-field propagation, enabling real-time ship noise prediction and whale distribution tracking. The proposed DSS performs a two-stage optimization pipeline: Batch Informed Trees for collision-free ship routing and a genetic algorithm for adaptive ship speed profiling under voyage constraints that minimizes cumulative URN exposure to marine mammals. The effectiveness of MUTE-DSS is demonstrated through case studies of ships operating between the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, comparing optimized voyages against baseline trajectories derived from automatic identification system data. Results show substantial reductions in noise exposure level, up to 7.14 dB, corresponding to approximately an 80.68 % reduction in a simplified scenario, and an average 4.90 dB reduction, corresponding to approximately a 67.6 % reduction in a more realistic dynamic setting. These results illustrate the adaptability and practical utility of the proposed decision support system.