Situation Assessment—An Essential Functionality for Resilient Navigation Systems

Abstract

This paper discusses the application of resilience engineering principles by shipborne navigation systems. As a technological system, the ship navigation system comprises all the communication and navigation equipment required to operate a ship. If examined as a socio-technological system, one has to additionally consider the use of the ship navigation system by the bridge teams in order to perform the nautical profession in terms of safe and efficient ship navigation, taking into account environmental information received by communication. The first part of this work discusses the theoretical background of resilience engineering and situation awareness. Case studies are used to illustrate under which conditions the application of resilience principles may result in an improvement of the operational reliability. With the help of simulations, it is shown that a sub-optimal implementation and utilization of resilience principles may decrease the robustness of the technical ship navigation system, as well as the reliability and adaptability of the ship navigation system in use. The examples illustrate once again that monitoring is one of the four cornerstones of resilience: anticipating, monitoring, learning, and responding. This is due to the effectiveness of most resilience principles depending on the availability and trustworthiness of situational information in relation to system status and environmental conditions, irrespective of whether the generation and use of the situational information is machine-made or human-made. Therefore, the establishment of situation awareness is an essential accompanying functionality to be considered in design, operation, and use of resilient systems.