Marine Software Engineering

Marine Software Engineering is the application of a science based, systematic, repeatable approach to design, development, operation and maintenance of software in marine applications.
The marine industry is about to become “software-determined”. Many on-board systems have significant amount of software inside and their quality directly depends on the quality of the software. MARSEC-XL, Marine Software Engineering Cluster of Excellence and MI-SE@MALTA, Marine Institute for Software Engineering at Malta, has developed a scientifically based methodology to assess the software content of any marine vessel. Furthermore a Marine Software Engineering Development process has been developed based on state of the art industry wide acknowledged principles, processes and practices such as:
Continuous Process Improvement based on
Cleanroom Software Engineering
Agile Software Development
Well defined architectures and the software product line approach
The marine industry with its very unique factors has lead the way for such a dynamic and innovative software engineering methodology. Most yachts, them being super yachts or commercial vessels have a typical lifetime far more than a car or truck and therefore the software embedded within such sea going vessels must be up to the challenge.
The software is engineered with various non-functional factors in mind, emphasizing on dependability, reliability and maintainability of the software solutions.
These properties allow the systems to provide the same level of performance from day one to the final trip of the yacht, hence leading onto very low levels of degradability. In addition, the software engineering principles used, such as high cohesion and low coupling of the components, allows the systems to be highly maintainable and allows the reuse of software components across various systems helping to reduce development costs.
The first solution-based artifact of any software system is the underlying architecture. With this in mind the marine software engineering methodology, focuses most of its efforts in guaranteeing that the architecture is fully up to the task no matter the systems being developed or the vessel in question, by means of verification and validation techniques, prior to the development of any code.
As the software systems on board yachts are getting more complex, with the lines of code per foot increasing exponentially, the methodology will in the future employ most of the principles of model-based software engineering, allowing the development of real-time marine systems to be totally abstracted from coding activities.
Examples of products and solutions with a growing software content
*Eco-Tech: reduced fuel consumption, reduced emissions and noise.
*Engines and propulsion systems (drive-line) : Drive by wire solutions, Dynamic positioning solutions, increased fuel efficiency with electronic fuel injection and hybrid solutions.
*Navigation: shortest route algorithms, optimal course whilst sailing, collision avoidance systems.
*Communication: Use of modern technologies such as satellite communications.
*Monitoring & Diagnostics: remote monitoring of yachts through high speed internet connections and advanced software systems.
*Infotainment.
*Comfort, Safety and Security Systems
*Design and Operational Support Tools: Tools which aid naval architects design greener yachts ranging from the shape of the hull to the angle of attack of the propellers.
*Sailing: Software is making the difference between victory and loss, with the advanced route planning suites used in the Volvo ocean race to the HUD technology used by BMW Oracle.
All these systems and solutions strongly depend on software, which controls them and most of them cannot be even implemented without the enabling factor: software. To be able to achieve reliable and cost effective solutions Marine Software Engineering is needed. Today, many of the challenges and problems in integration of systems and operation of marine vessels stem from the fact that the software has not been developed according to the principles of Marine Software Engineering. MARSEC-XL addresses this challenge by defining, developing and introducing Marine Software Engineering to the marine industry. Achieving this goal will ultimately contribute to safer, cleaner, more user-friendly and economic vessels.

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