Stochastic uncertainty modelling for ship design loads and operational guidance

•Understanding and modelling uncertainties related to ship loads and responses is important for ship design development, approval and operations.•Stochastic probabilistic approaches can help with big data processing, validation and verification of decision making criteria.•Modern Decision Support Systems (DSS) can help with the mitigation of maritime environmental and operational risks as well as the reduction of fuel consumption by introducing routeing scenarios.

Understanding and quantification of uncertainties are important attributes for the assessment of the performance, reliability and risk of complex engineering structures and systems. From a naval architecture perspective the consideration of the uncertainties related to ship’s seakeeping responses and wave induced loads is necessary for the assessment of ship design as well as for safe and efficient ship operations. To this end, the efficient processing of large amounts of data and the stochastic load combination by use of available numerical models may assist with the rationalisation of modelling assumptions and support the validation and verification of design and decision making criteria in the context of risk based ship design. This paper presents recent advances in (a) modelling the combined hydrodynamic responses of ship structures using cross-spectral combination methods and (b) in implementing uncertainty models used for the development of modern decision support systems as guidance to ship’s master.