Facing the increasing quantity and richness of data related to modeling and simulations of maritime systems, advanced solutions that can maintain data coherence and traceability are becoming increasingly beneficial. In the context of modeling complex systems, such as ship design, retaining connections of systems data, whether quantitative or qualitative, helps to provide a traceable and comprehensive view of the vessel at various stages of its development. This paper explores the use of graph databases to help provide such connections and introduces various domains of systems data that would be advantageous to link via graph theory. Additionally, this paper explores how graph databases compare to current flat file databases in a practical sample case of multi-domain data related to ship concept design.

We propose the use of existing data standards and web technologies to modeling and development of digital twin ships. Our research provides an open framework that can be linked to services such as visualizations, simulations and remote control. The case study applies the standards-based framework to an experiment that involved a scale model ship equipped with a dynamic positioning system under artificial waves. The digital twin prototype illustrated the capability of mirroring and controlling the model’s position in real-time, and predicting motion responses across wave conditions via a web application. Thus, it closes the loop between test and design in the life cycle by allowing validation of results in comparison to empirical data during operation. The results from these experiments are used to discuss an expanded version of the digital twin for validation and optimization of motion response, as well as its implications to the system’s (ship) taxonomy and data management. The conclusion summarizes lessons when using the adopted standards, as well as challenges when scaling the approach to real life operations. Future research is proposed toward extending the standardization to more complex cases.

The ship design activity often requires handling and storage of large amounts of data related to different systems inside the vessel, demanding for a structured way to organize it. This article suggests an object-oriented approach to handle virtual prototyping data during conceptual ship design. We start presenting some of the basic concepts related to objects, such as name, property and value. A proposal based on the entity, state and process models is addressed for the virtual prototyping, related to the object-oriented approach. Later, we use the SFI group system as hierarchy structure to represent the ship as an entity and state model. We finish by presenting some simple examples of the proposed approach with a modular ship models and introducing one suggestion of a virtual prototyping model using the concepts presented thorough the paper.