Integrated control and monitoring systems-a growing requirement

Traditionally the control and monitoring of a ship propulsion, electrical generation, auxiliaries and damage control has been carried out using independent systems. Some equipment has been remotely controlled from the machinery control room or the bridge, but for many auxiliaries only local control has been provided. However, there has been a trend towards combining these systems to facilitate operation from one position, and increasing the extent of remote control and automation. Instead of propulsion control with 200-300 points, requirements now include most of the main ship machinery and need 3000 to 4000 points. Such systems are well within the scope of industrial automation techniques, but these have been adopted less readily on merchant ships, while war ship designers have been even more cautious. This is because of real concerns as to whether the equipment will perform adequately under all expected shipboard conditions. The main areas where doubts arise have been fault tolerance, operator overload in emergencies and the ability to find and repair defects. The paper discusses the design of a system to meet the requirements