A life cycle perspective to sustainable hydrogen powered maritime systems - functional and technical requirements

The International Maritime Organization has set the goal of reducing CO2 emissions from international shipping by at least 40% by 2030, compared to 2008. To meet this target, ship builders are evaluating alternative fuel sources capable of increasing energy efficiency. This paper presents technical and functional requirements specific to the operationalised middle of life cycle phase. These requirements have been established from a comprehensive literature review and focus group with maritime vessel designers and engineers

Using Epoch Era Analysis in the Design of the Next Generation Offshore Subsea Construction Vessels

This thesis examines the plausibility of using Epoch-Era Analysis during conceptual design of the next generation offshore subsea construction vessel (OSCV). Spurred by high oil prices and a decreasing level of accessible carbon resources, OSCVs have to a larger degree become qualified as flexible and cost efficient solutions for marginal fields. The reduction of easy oil has led to a push towards harsher regions, at deeper operational depths and farther from shore. Consequently, the market and technology is in constant development continuously leading to new requirements, regulations and legislation being imposed on the ship building process.Facing these challenges, designers are expected to account for broader, multi-faceted future scenarios, while simultaneously improving performance and decreasing cost. Leading to an exorbitant amount of information needing to be incorporated and accounted for, while future uncertainty increases exponentially the further one looks. Coupled with a widespread tendency many owners have of optimizing designs to the initial obtainable contract, the impact of future uncertainties on earning capability and cost, have to a certain degree been neglected because of its difficulty to model. This work utilizes a comprehensive Epoch-Era Analysis in an attempt to highlight the benefits especially present in complicated and highly uncertain scenarios. A developed segment of code was used to create the foundation data, which is further analyzed in Tableau. The resulting analysis yields favorable results in terms of illustrating the potential Epoch-Era Analysis has as a tool to decompose complicated information and turning it into valuable insights for stakeholders to evaluate, inherently making communication with designers much clearer and unambiguous. Key aspects include the ability of revealing and defining which features and capabilities stakeholders actually value and evaluating all possible design solutions accordingly to identify attractive cost-benefit ratios, and at the same time discover which future scenarios are the most profitable. Adding constraints to the analysis also enabled a coherent mapping of which possible designs are applicable to probable future scenarios, according to any requirements imposed. The results imply that the use of Epoch-Era Analysis during conceptual design can most certainly provide invaluable acumen with an inherent capability of increasing stakeholders confidence in their final choice of design. This increased level of confidence also simplifies their message to the designer, making it much easier to interpret and accordingly optimize the vessel. Through the use of this analysis exogenous circumstances such as technology or market developments otherwise difficult to capture, can be deconstructed and taken into consideration through a more factual perspective leading to lesser risk and higher value

Identification and Valuation of Flexibility in Marine Systems Design

Marine systems, typically related to transport services and offshore petroleum projects, are often complex and involve a high degree of uncertainty related to their future operating context. Uncertain factors, such as oil prices and changing environmental regulations, are usually highly influential for the performance of these projects and introduce risks for investors in the capital-intensive maritime industry. This thesis investigates how flexibility can be considered at the design stage for handling uncertainty for marine systems, in contrast to traditional post-design operational methods. Flexibility opens up for both reducing the downside risk and taking advantage of upside possibilities, hence increasing the expected value of a design. Even though real options analysis represents an established approach for analysing flexibility, it may be inappropriate for more complex systems. To better structure options for marine systems design, a differentiation is made between more traditional, operational "on" options, and more complex, technical "in" options. Choosing the right method for analysis is ambiguous, therefore multiple approaches for identifying and valuing relevant flexibilities are discussed in this thesis. Identification methods include interviews and different systems engineering platforms for exploring how designs respond to changing contextual parameters. Valuation approaches include traditional analytical, lattice and Monte Carlo simulation methods for pricing real options, and more novel tradespace evaluation techniques. A generic framework for flexibility analysis is presented, serving as a stepwise approach to quantifying flexibility and as a means of communication between analysts and decision makers, both technical and non-technical. The flexibility analysis framework is illustrated through a case study of a large container ship design. By using screening methods to identify candidate flexibilities such as capacity expansion and fuel-switching, and Monte Carlo simulations for valuation, it was found that flexibility increases the profitability index by 27%, on a 200 million dollar investment. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that screening and simulation methods are appropriate for the use in design of large commercial deep-sea marine transportation systems. From an established real options valuation side, it is obvious that strategic flexibility has value, however, for non-standard applications typically involving complex "in" options, it is more ambiguous how to proceed. Even though system analysts recognise the value of flexibility, there is still a need for further research since flexibility rarely is seen in the maritime industry