The global challenges, such as climate changes, green energy, food security, people safety and migrants mobility, and the new technological developments are reshaping the European economy, affecting the usage of the marine space as well. In the last decades, new business activities were born along the European sea coasts, such as aquaculture and renewable energy, beside the intensification of more traditional ones, like blue tourism, surveying, emergency and recovery response. This marine business diversification brings new activities and requires specialized operations and then the maritime industry is challenged to develop innovative vessels able to work in a more and more efficient, cost effective and specialized way to satisfy the above business needs. LINCOLN project demonstrates how this new market demand of the maritime sector can be satisfied through an integrated approach among the technological enhancements in the vessels equipment and ICT sector, a new design & shipbuilding proposition and the vessel life cycle perspective adoption. This adds high value not only to the vessels in themselves, but to the whole shipbuilding industry and its value chain.
LINCOLN project vision is to develop three new added value vessels with innovative on board equipment, using lean design methodology and IoT solutions, able to be used in diverse maritime coastal activities and sectors in an efficient and sustainable way. The new developed vessels are:
• A multi-platform catamaran to serve as Service crew vessel and Multipurpose survey vessel, with hybrid propulsion and innovative people transfer system
• A design and production module based high-speed patrol boat platform, with its first vessel release
• An Emergency Response and Recovery Vessel (ERRV), with a low cost dynamic positioning system.
These vessels represent three highly focused costal activities and takes in account all the main seas around Europe (Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, Mediterranean).
They have been designed according to the lean fact based design approach, reported in figure 1.
Figure 1: LINCOLN Lean fact based design approach
LINCOLN has developed and applyed lean design tools (KbeML – Knowledge Based Engineering Modelling Language) and methodologies (SBCE – Set Based Concurrent Engineering), taking care of sustainability of the whole process, from environmental (LCA - Life Cycle Assessment) and financial (LCC - Life Cycle Cost) point of view and adopting digital solutions, through an integrated IoT (Internet of Things) platform, able to provide knowledge and future services to the maritime sector actors. In detail, the IoT platform consists of a physical part made of dedicated black boxes (also called edge gateway), the UMG (Universal Marine Gateway) black box for vessel prototypes and the MG (Marine Gateway) for commercial versions, hosting sensors and connected to other vessels systems, like the on-board weather station Portweather, able to provide short time weather forecast locally. The data gathered by the sensors are then collected and sent to a cloud system, where they are analysed and processed through specific algorithms. The generated information is published through a web interface to different end-users categories, like designers, shipbuilders, suppliers, maintenance companies, etc. Moreover, the platform includes a semi-automated virtual towing tank, based on HPC (High Performance Computing) and named LincoSim, where the designers can simulate the hull behaviour in different conditions, fastening the design choices.
The benefits of the LINCOLN IoT platform are not just limited to the design and shipbuilding phases of the vessels, but they can also be extended to the operational life of the vessels, enabling new after sales services in the maritime sector. Figure 2 shows the whole LINCOLN project approach.
Figure 2: LINCOLN project approach
