Supplementing Industry-Specific Dynamic Positioning Requirements to Network Theory

Abstract

The trend towards fully autonomous navigation or reduced manning concepts, coupled with increased integration and interdependence of onboard systems due to the shift towards sustainable fuels and ever-increasing electrification and automation, has stressed the significance of ship systems’ reliability. These developments reinforce the demand for a clear assessment of the robustness of main and auxiliary systems in early-stage ship design. Network theory offers a promising approach to address this demand. However, current graph measures do not align with industry-specific requirements for improving system robustness. This study aims to augment robustness evaluation components, such as modularity (independent subsys-tems), redundancy and reconfigurability, with additional considerations specific to Dynamic Positioning (DP) applications in the maritime industry. The enhanced robustness evaluation components are translated into graph measures. By employing these graph measures, different systems can be compared with respect to robustness, enabling informed decision-making in the trade-offs typical to early stages of the design pro-cess (e.g., cost versus redundancy). The proposed methodology combines the principles of network theory and industry-specific DP requirements to provide a comprehensive framework for evaluating the robustness of ship systems. System reliability can be assessed by integrating the identified robustness components and incorporating them into the graph measures. The early findings of this study show the potential to improve ship design processes by providing a systematic and quantifiable approach to enhance robustness.