Editorial

Dear readers of International Shipbuilding Progress,

This double issue 68(3, 4) of International Shipbuilding Progress (ISP) fills me with pride. These are modern times and maritime research has the responsibility to address modern issues. Naturally ship design and ship construction are at the core of our field – and we have an article about that. But one can tell that social aspects are permeating into our research, because we have two additional articles discussing the safety of people aboard ships.

Issue 68(3, 4) contains the following articles.

The first article, titled A FAST assembly simulation analysis method for hull blocks with engineering constraints by Guan et al. is about optimising the assembly of ships composed of hull blocks. The proposed algorithms are presented and applied to the construction of a ship as an example.

The next article is titled Hazard analysis of a yacht designed for people with disabilities and written by Branowski et al. The authors have applied two methods of risk analysis, a preliminary hazard analysis, and a process hazard analysis, for assessing the adaptations made to a yacht design for accommodating people with disabilities. Based on the results of the latter analysis, a set of new guidelines for adaptations was created.

The third and final article in this issue is about simulating ship evacuations during calamities. The title is Ship evacuation simulation using a game engine: modelling, testing and validation and it is written by Montecchiari et al. The main idea for using a game engine to simulate ship evacuations was to also use the method in virtual reality environments for multiple purposes and obvious reasons. This a true strength. The method is presented, discussed and validated against experimental data. After that, simulations are performed for an evacuation of people distributed over multiple decks. The uncertainties of the method are discussed at length.

The editorial board and I wish that you will appreciate the emphasis on safety in this issue of ISP.

All the best,

Peter Wellens

Editor-in-chief