Closing the gap between early and detailed ship design models

Abstract

Conventionally, ship design and engineering are segregated activities, carried out with different software packages that thus each have their own place, qualities and tools. And consequently, a different data model. As a report on ongoing work to bridge that gap, this paper first explores existing neutral data models and standards employed or considered in maritime applications and concludes that none of these is directly applicable. It continues with describing the requirements and derived abstract data model of the SEUS project and its design and engineering applications. A graph database is identified as a potentially useful tool for SEUS data modelling, and a hands-on experiment confirms this presumption.