Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology

The development of autonomous and crewless ships is expected to respond to the shipping industry and society needs pertinent to the sustainability of shipping operations, resilience of the supply chain, as well as lack of skilful crew in the medium to long term. The recent upsurge of initiatives worldwide toward the development of autonomous and unmanned ships has resulted in an explosion of advances, key enabling technologies, approaches, and tools leading to the building of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) prototypes. Next-generation autonomous shipping ecosystems are expected to be of multidisciplinary socio-technical nature, bearing increasing complexity, rendering the interactions and interrelations between the involved subsystems/components unpredictable. This introduces new challenges for the design and operation of next-generation MASS, especially pertinent to their safety, risk, reliability, maintainability, health management, and cybersecurity amongst other. To address these challenges, the uptake and use of multi-disciplinary spearhead research initiatives are required, developing and employing in novel ways, advanced methods and tools, including, for example, digital twins, machine learning and Artificial intelligence techniques, virtual environments, safety analysis as well as prognostics and health management.

This Special Issue aims to present and discuss the most contemporary concepts, novel and advanced methods, techniques, methodologies, and tools to address the challenges the field of the safety and cybersecurity, reliability, maintainability, and decision making for maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS). Contributions are expected in the following indicative topics for MASS: safety, cybersecurity, health management, human-machine interactions, verification and validation, risk, reliability and maintainability, modelling and digital twins, decision making, design, and operation.

This Special Issue aims to provide the platform for scientists, researchers, and professionals as well as to drive the discussions and further develop the current and future research and innovation activities in the preceding areas for the next-generation MASS. Submissions of extended version of papers presented in the 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL2023) are targeted, however, other submissions are also encouraged.

The submitted manuscript should not exceed the limit of 8000 words (excluding references, acknowledgements, and nomenclature/abbreviation lists).

Submission of abstract of up to 300 words are required by 15 December 2023. The submission of the full manuscript is due on 31 March 2024.

Research articles are primarily accepted. Review papers submissions must be first approved by the guest editors.

During submission, select the special issue title "Advances on Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships".