Improving Decision Making in Ocean Race Sailing using Sensor Data

While in some sports, experiences have been gained using traditional information and decision support systems, using large sensor datasets for sports analytics is a recent phenomenon. Using sensor data to arrive at effective decision support for sports encompasses various challenges: (1) Sensor data needs to be understood, processed, cleaned and efficiently stored and (2) appropriate data analytics and visualization techniques need to be selected and evaluated with the sports professionals. Few elaborate case studies are available that report on development of decision support systems for professional sports teams. No comprehensive set of generically applicable design principles has been devised to develop analytics support for sports teams based on sensor data. We deploy a design science methodology to arrive at a sailing analytics architecture and race evaluation dashboard in close collaboration with a professional sailing team participating in an ocean race around the world.