Operational Effectiveness, Functions and Naval Tasks: a Multi - Dimensional Environment for the Definition of Naval Units

The European shipbuilding industry is highly specialized in the design and construction of large passenger ships and military vessels. The efforts to maintain the current competitive advantage must increase and develop, in particular by integrating ships with high technological content, with innovative approaches and tools. In the paper an innovative approach is presented to tackle the problem of merging between high level requirements and the ship general characteristics, in the specific field of naval vessel. The goal of the proposed approach is to provide a support system allowing a multi-dimensional evaluation of the operational effectiveness of the naval unit. In particular, the system will allow knowledge mining (knowledge elicitation) from Navy experts in order to specify, the level of significance of alternative devices and configurations characterizing a naval unit. The aim of the project is the definition of a process and the development of a demonstrator prototype, which can support the so-called Strategic Requirements Planning, i.e., the correct specification of the main requirements of the ship. The system will be developed according to the principles of cognitive ergonomics and interface design, in order to provide a seamless and effective interaction between decision makers managing complex pieces of information.